THE  NEW  YORK 
OF  THE  NOVELISTS 


'THE   BIG   CANONS   OF  THE    MONEY  GRUBBING  TRIBE"    BY   DAY 


THE  NEW  YORK 
OF    THE    NOVELISTS 


BY 
ARTHUR  BARTLETT  MAURICE 


WITH  ILLUSTRATIONS 


NEW  YORK 

DODD,  MEAD  AND  COMPANY 
1917 


COPYRIGHT,  1915 
BY  DODD,  MEAD  AND  COMPANY 

COPYRIGHT,  1916 
BY  DODD,  MEAD  AND  COMPANY,  INO 


TO 
THE  '94  SPIRIT 


CONTENTS 

INTRODUCTION xix 

PART  I 

THE  CANONS  OP  THE  MONEY  GRUBBERS 

CHAPTEB  PAGE 

I    When    the    Town    was    Young— The    City    of 

Irving,  Cooper,  Poe,  and  Their  Contemporaries      3 

II    The  Battery— Bowling  Green— Old  Wall  Street 

— Bunner's  New  York — Jacob  Dolph's  House      9 

III  Other  Trails  of  Yesterday — Janvier — Warner — 

Crawford — Mrs.  Barr — Admiral  Porter   .     .     16 

IV  Gateways  of  Invasion — Approaching  the  Sky- 

line—Kipling's       "Dimbula"— 0.        Henry's 
"Little  Old  Bagdad  on  the  Subway"  ...     21 

V  The  Big  Canons  of  the  Money  Grubbing  Tribe— 
The  Office  of  Carteret  and  Carteret— Wilton 
Sargent:  American — Muldoon,  A  New  York 
Horse 30 

VI    Edwin  Lefevre's  Wall  Street— "The  Woman  and 

Her  Bonds" 36 

VII  Some  Men  of  the  Street— The  Lane  of  the  Ticker 
—"The  Golden  Flood"— "Sampson  Rock  of 
Wall  Street"— Lefevre  and  Frank  Norris  .  .  41 

VIII  Park  Row  in  Fiction— The  Old  Time  Figures- 
Journalistic  Bohemia — Jesse  Lynch  Williams 
— David  Graham  Phillips — Stephen  Whitman 
—Edward  W.  Townsend 47 

IX     The  Five  Points  and  Chimmie  Fadden  .  53 


CONTENTS 

PART  II 

THE  MYSTERIOUS  EAST  SIDE 

OHAPTEB  PAGE 

I  The  Trail  of  Potash  and  Perlmutter— Wasser- 
bauer's  Cafe— Henry  D.  Feldman— The  Lis- 
penard  Street  Loft  ........  61 

II    The  Origin  of  the  Tales— The  Vernacular  of  the 

Cloak  and  Suit  Business — Selling  by  the  Gross    64 

III  Police  Headquarters  and  Criminal  Court — The 

Firm  of  Shaw  and  Shimmel — Arthur  Train's 
Artemas   Quibble — Pontin's   Restaurant    .     .     69 

IV  "Case's"  and  "The  Big  Barracks"— Scenes  of 

Stories  by  R.  H.  Davis  and  Julian  Ralph  .     .     74 

V  The  Search  for  the  Mysterious  East  Side— The 
London  of  Dickens  and  the  Paris  of  Sue  and 
Balzac 77 

VI  Tales  of  Mean  Streets— Batavia  Street— The 
Jolly  Albanians — Washington's  Cherry  Street 
Home— Doyer  Street— Allen  Street  ...  80 

VII  Tales  of  Mean  Streets— Orchard  Street— The 
Bowery— The  Straw  Cellar— McTurk's— 
Monkey  Hill 86 

VIII  The  Ghetto— Sidney  Rosenfeld— Abraham 
Cahan — The  Kosciuszko  Bank — James  Oppen- 
heim — East  Broadway — Division  Street — Nor- 
folk Street 95 

IX  Tales  of  Mean  Streets— Henry  Street— Grand 
Street — Mulberry  Street — Chinatown — Helen 
Van  Campen— The  Slums  of  Stephen  Crane  .  100 

X  The  East  Side  of  0.  Henry— the  Cafe  Maginnis 
—The  Blue  Light  Drug  Store— Dutch  Mike's 
Saloon— No.  12  Avenue  C  .  .108 


CONTENTS 

PART  III 

THE  REMNANTS  OP  BOHEMIA 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

I    The  Hunt  for  Bohemia— The  Paris  Latin  Quar- 
ter— Finding  the  New  York  Maison  Vauquer  .  115 

II    The  Old-Time  Haunts— The  Grand  Vatel— The 

Taverne    Alsaeienne— PfafFs 120 

III  Washington    Square — Henry    James — Brander 

Matthews — The  Midge — As  Bunner  Saw  the 
Square 124 

IV  The    Garibaldi— Brasserie    Pigault— The    Casa 

Napoleon  of  the  Thomas  A.  Janvier  Stories  .  132 

V  The  Square  of  Phillips  and  Whitman— The 
Boarding  House  of  "The  Great  God  Success" 
— How  Phillips  Began  as  a  Novelist — The 
Trail  of  "Predestined" 139 

VI  Mr.  Davis  and  his  Van  Bibber — Stevenson's 
Velvet  Jacket— The  Fourteenth  Street  of  "The 
Exiles" 146 

VII    Purlieus  of  Greenwich  Village — The  Pie  Houses 

of  "The  Man  Hunt"— West  Tenth  Street  .     .  154 

VIII  From  Poe  to  Porter — Abingdon  Square — Varick 
Street— Sheridan  Park— The  Wall  of  "The 
Last  Leaf" 160 

IX  The  Trail  of  "Max  Fargus"— The  House  of  the 
Tin  Sailor— Shysters'  Row— A  Mythical  Part 
of  Irving  Place— The  Course  of  Empire — 68 
Clinton  Place 166 

X  Crawford's  New  York — Old  Second  Avenue — 
Tompkins  Square— The  House  of  "The  Last 
Meeting"— Colonel  Carter's  Home  ....  174 


CONTENTS 

PART  IV 

THE  HEART  OF  NEW  ARABIA 
OHAPTEB  PAGE 

I  The  Outstanding  Figures — Robert  Burns's  Ayr- 
shire—The France  of  "Quentin  Durward"— 
What  California  Meant  to  Kipling — Thunder 
in  the  Catskills 187 

II  The  Story  of  "The  Bread  Line"— Identifying 
the  Characters— Publication  Offices  of  "The 
Whole  Family" 193 

III  The   Maison   de    Shine— The    Original   of   the 

Actor's  Boarding  House  in  the  Helen  Van 
Campen  Stories — Following  Vaudeville  to  Its 
Lair 197 

IV  Lower     Second     Avenue     Again — Stuyvesant 

Square— "The  Fortune  Hunter"— St.  Mark's 
Place— "Felix  O'Day" 201 

V  The  Heart  of  0.  Henry  Land— Where  Porter 
Lived — The  Hotel  America — Old  Munich  and 
the  Little  Rheinschloss 205 

VI  Once  More  in  Washington  Square — "The  Last  of 
the  Knickerbockers"— Waverly  Place— St. 
George's— "The  Boule  Cabinet"— The  Mara- 
thon— No.  13  Washington  Square — Rupert 
Court 214 

VII  Gramercy  Park— The  Home  of  the  Von  der 
Ruyslings— "The  Alternative"— Clubs  on  the 
North  and  Clubs  on  the  South 222 

VHI  The  Heart  of  New  Arabia— The  City  as  the 
Artists  See  It— The  Bed  Line— Madison 
Square— Union  Square— Stuffy  Pete's  Bench  228 


CONTENTS 

PART  V 
TEA,  TANGO,  AND  TOPER  LAND 

OHAPTEB  PAGE 

I  The  Inns  of  Fiction— Mine  Host  of  Yesterday— 
The  Trenchermen  Beyond  the  Magic  Door — A 
Little  Dinner  in  the  Land  of  Make-Believe  .  237 

II  Doubling  on  the  Trail— "The  King  in  Yellow"— 
The  Blind  Alleys  of  New  York— London 
Terrace 243 

III  The  Later  Robert  W.  Chambers— The  Plaza  and 

the  Park— The  Patroon  and  the  Pyramid— 
"lole" 251 

IV  The  Berkeley— Old  Delmonico's— The  Manhat- 

tan Club— Poverty  Flat 257 

V    "The    Avenue"— The    Old    Curiosity    Shop    of 

"Felix  O'Day"— The  Suicide  of  a  Street  .     .  264 

VI  Concerning  the  Town  of  the  Playwright— "The 
Charity  Ball"— "The  Old  Homestead"— Clyde 
Fitch's  New  York 271 

VII  The  Department  Store  in  Fiction — Montague 
Glass — Edna  Ferber — Samuel  Merwin's  "The 
Honey  Bee"— The  Shop  Girls  of  0.  Henry  .  277 

VIII  The  Shifting  Scene— Hotels  of  the  Great  White 
Way— The  Zig  Zag  Trail— The  Metropolitan 
Opera  House— The  Old  Grand  Central  .  .  284 

IX  "The  House  of  Mirth"  and  Others— Bryant 
Park— "Stanfield's"— Stewart  Edward  White 
and  127  Madison  Avenue 294 

X  New  Bohemias — Westover  Court — Teagan's  Ar- 
cade—The House  of  a  Million  Intrigues  .  .  298 


CONTENTS 

PART  VI 

THE  CITY  REMOTE  AND  THE  CITY  BEYOND 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

I    Some  Suburbs  of  Fiction — Southward  Bound — 
The   London   of   Esmond — The   Environs  of 

Paris 305 

II  The  Water  Side— Jabez  Bulltongue  of  Locust 
Valley— On  a  North  River  Pier— DeWitt 
Clinton  Park 311 

III  Roads  to  the  North— Yorkville— A   House  in 

Fifty-fourth  Street— St.  John's  Cathedral  and 
Morningside  Park — No  Man's  Land — The 
Polo  Grounds  and  Manhattan  Field — Dobbs 
Ferry 315 

IV  The  Cosmopolitan  City— Beekman  Place— The 

Terrace — Recalling  Henry  Harland — Repro- 
ducing The  Old  World 322 

V  More  Roads  to  the  North — Laguerre's — Pelham 
Bay— The  Boston  Post  Road— White  Plains- 
Pound  Ridge — "Keeping  Up  with  Lizzie" — 

Sleepy  Hollow 330 

VI    Harlem  Heights — The  Neutral  Ground — Scenes 
of  "Chimmie  Fadden"— The  Country  of  "The 

Spy" 338 

VII    Greenpoint  and  Edgar  Fawcett — F.  Hopkinson 
Smith's    "Tom    Grogan"— Over    the    River- 
Columbia  Heights  and  "The  Harbour"— The 
Brooklyn  Water  Front  .     .     .     .     .     .     .344 

VIII  The  City  of  Joys,  Tawdry  and  Sublime— The 
Statue  of  Liberty— The  Old  Coney  Trans- 
formed—Blinker Finds  His  Brothers  .  .  .358 
IX  The  New  Jersey  Trail— The  Atlantic  Highlands 
— Days  of  the  Revolution — The  Rumson  Road 
—The  Country  of  the  "Pig  People"— Gothic 
Towers  and  Stately  Elms 363 


ILLUSTRATIONS 


"The  Big   Canons   of  the   Money   Grubbing 
Tribe,"   by  Day Frontispiece 

FACING 
PAGE 

Entering  the  Great  Canons  of  the  Money  Grubbing 

Tribe 16 

Monkey  Hill,  in  "Eben  Holden" .34 

New  Street,  the  Street  of  the  Derelicts 46 

The  Old  Slip  Police  Station 46 

Trail  of  Potash  and  Perlmutter 56 

"The  Cafe  of  the  Jolly  Albanians,"  Cherry  Street  .  .  78 

The  Dark  Alley 78 

Batavia  Street 78 

The  "Big  Barracks"  Tenement  in  Forsythe  Street  .  .  88 

Pontin's  Restaurant  in  Franklin  Street 96 

The  Bend 96 

The  Blue  Light  Drug  Store 104 

Norfolk  Street 104 

Greenwich  Village 110 

House  Belonging  to  Mrs.  Osborn,  facing  Rutherford 

Square  130 

On  Washington  Square  South,  between  Sullivan  and 

Macdougal  Streets 130 

Colonnade  Row,  in  Lafayette  Place,  opposite  the  old 

Astor  Library 142 

xiii 


xiv  ILLUSTRATIONS 

FACING 
PAGE 

The  Home  of  the  Ferrols,  of  Stephen  French  Whitman's 
"Predestined" 150 

Opposite  the  Jefferson  Market  Police  Court  is  a  Short 
Row  of  Dingy  Houses 150 

Where  Van  Bibber  Found  the  Runaway  Couple     .     .  176 

Captain  Peter's  Home — Washington  Square     .     .     .  176 

Chrysalis       College— Theodore      WinthropTs       "Cecil 

Dreeme" 192 

Irving  Place  Looking  South  from  Gramercy  Park  .     .  200 

In  the  Old-time  Novels  of  New  York  Life  Visiting 
Englishmen  invariably  stopped  at  the  Brevoort  .  .  218 

The  Princeton  Club  of  New  York 224: 

Old  St.  George's  on  Rutherford  Square 224 

Across  the  Square  and  through  the  White  Arch  Bo- 
hemia and  Proletaire  Gaze  Curiously  and  Enviously 
at  Belgravia 230 

Gramercy  Park,  South.  Here  was  the  Siwash  Club  of 
the  George  Fitch  Stories 244 

Washington  Square  North,  Peopled  by  the  Ghosts  of 
Countless  Aristocrats  of  New  York  Fiction  .  .  .  244 

The  Type  of  Antique  Shop  at  Fourth  Avenue  and 
Thirtieth  Street 254 

The  Studio  of  Harrison  Fisher,  in  West  Thirty-second 
Street 254 

The  Melancholy  Pleasure  Ground  of  Bryant  Park     .  266 
The  Waiting  Room  of  the  Old  Grand  Central  Station  .  280 

The  House  in  Fifty-fourth  Street  Out  of  which  Grew 
James  Lane  Allen's  "A  Heroine  in  Bronze"  .  .  .  288 

The  Part  of  the  City  Associated  with  Owen  Johnson's 
"The  Sixty-first  Second" 288 

The  Aristocratic  Sweep  of  Fifth  Avenue  Overlooking 
the  Park  .  296 


ILLUSTRATIONS  xv 

FACING 
PAGE 

The  Office  of  Daniel  Frobman  at  the  Top,  of  the 
Lyceum  Theatre  Building 308 

Columbus  Circle.  All  about  Here  are  the  "Lobster 
Palaces"  of  the  Tea,  Tango  and  Toper  Land  of  New 
York  Fiction 314 

The  Ferry  at  West  Forty-second  Street.  0.  Henry's 
"The  Poet  and  the  Peasant" 318 

De  Witt  Clinton  Park.  O.  Henry's  "Vanity  and  Some 
Sables"  318 

Glimpse  through  the  Trees  of  Laguerre's  "Most  De- 
lightful of  French  Inns  in  the  Quaintest  of  French 
Settlements" 336 

The  City  of  Joys,  Tawdry  and  Sublime 342 

The  Light  House  at  Barnegat.  F.  Hopkinson  Smith's 
"The  Tides  of  Barnegat" 358 

Mrs.  Liberty.  "Made  by  a  Dago  and  Presented  to  the 
American  People  on  Behalf  of  the  French  Govern- 
ment"    .362 


ILLUSTRATIONS 

In  the  Text 

PAGE 

A  Passing  Gateway  of  Invasion 22 

In  Washington  Street  in  the  Curious  Little  Syrian 

Colony  28 

The  Street  Ten  Years  Ago 38 

One  of  the  Most  Sinister  of  all  the  Sinister  Corners  of 

the  Five  Point  District 54 

The  Newgate  of  New  York 70 

The  Old  Restaurant  of  the  Grand  Vatel,  on  West 

Houston  Street 121 

A  Temporary  New  York  Home  of  Hurstwood  .  .  .  128 

A  la  Ville  de  Rouen 133 

A  Remnant  of  the  Greenwich  Village  that  Was  .  .  155 
The  "Pie  Houses"  of  Greenwich  Village  .  .  .  .157 
Cosmopolitan  New  York.  A  London  Slum  .  .  .  161 

The  Jefferson  Market  Police  Court 167 

On  Fourteenth  Street  very  nearly  Opposite  the  South- 
ern End  of  Irving  Place 171 

The  Home  F.  Hopkinson  Smith  Found  for  Colonel 

Carter 180 

A  Shrine  of  Yesterday 182 

The  "Maison  de  Shine" 198 

In  "The  Fortune  Hunter"  David  Graham  Phillips 

staked  a  very  definite  claim  to  a  Section  of  the  City  203 
Fronting  on  Irving  Place  Is  the  Saloon  of  0.  Henry's 

"The  Lost  Blend" 209 

xvii 


xviii  ILLUSTKATIONS 

PAGE 

The  Interior  of  "Old  Munich" 212 

The  Cosmopolitan  City,  Venice 223 

The  House  on  Gramercy  Park,  North,  Used  in  "Her 

Letter  to  His  Second  Wife" 225 

A  Little  Dinner  in  the  Land  of  Make  Believe  .  .  .241 
The  Opening  Through  which  the  People  who  Live  in 

Milliken  Place  Reach  the  Outside  World  ....  246 

"Beyond  the  Gate  Lies  Milliken  Place" 247 

On  the  North  Side  of  West  Twenty-third  Street, 

between  Ninth  and  Tenth  Avenues 249 

George  Barr  McCutcheon  Found  a  New  York  Residence 

for  Monty  Brewster 258 

The  House  of  Richard  Harding  Davis's  "Vera  the 

Medium" 262 

"With  a  Crash  and  a  Shriek  Fourth  Avenue  Dives 

Headlong  into  the  Tunnel" 270 

The  Cosmopolitan  City,  London  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  274 

The  Cosmopolitan  City,  Paris 285 

One  of  the  Exits  that  Leads  Over  the  Roof  Tops  in 

"The  Castle  of  a  Million  Intrigues" 301 

Beekman  Place,  George  Bronson-Howard's  "God's 

Man" 323 

Provincial  France 325 

Italy 327 

The  Cosmopolitanism  of  New  York— Ireland  .  .  .328 
The  Gardens  from  Montague  Terrace.  Ernest  Poole's 

"The  Harbour" 350 

The  Gardens  Looking  Toward  the  Inner  Bay.  Ernest 

Poole's  "The  Harbour" 352 

Pierrepont  Place.  Ernest  Poole's  "The  Harbour"  .  355 


INTRODUCTION 

Seventeen  years  ago  the  writer  of  this  vol- 
ume, with  a  note  book  under  one  arm  and  a 
camera  under  the  other,  was  engaged  in  roam- 
ing through  the  streets  of  New  York  and  its 
suburbs,  following  the  trails  of  such  men  and 
women  of  fiction  as  the  novelist,  until  that  time, 
had  been  considerate  enough  to  provide.  It 
was  a  task  undertaken  with  a  very  genuine  lik- 
ing and  enthusiasm  and  there  should  be  no 
reticence  in  recalling  its  direct  inspiration.  In 
previous  visits  to  London  the  writer  had  had 
many  pleasant  hours  in  following  the  footsteps 
of  Thackeray  and  Dickens,  paying  his  respects 
to  the  house  in  Curzon  Street  where  the  Eaw- 
don  Crawleys  lived  on  nothing  a  year,  the  home 
of  the  Sedleys,  near  Eussell  Square,  or  wan- 
dering down  the  High  Street  of  the  Borough 
of  Southwark,  and  turning  down  Angel  Court 
in  search  of  the  few  remaining  stones  of  the 

xix 


xx  INTRODUCTION 

old  Marshalsea  Prison  of  Little  Dorrit.  When 
it  was  a  matter  of  Dickens  and  Thackeray  the 
task  was  easy  enough.  In  various  places 
"rambles"  with  the  former  had  been  printed, 
and  there  was  Mr.  William  H.  Eideing's  Thack- 
eray's London,  a  subject  which  has  in  later 
years  been  more  amply  handled  by  Mr.  Lewis 
Melville,  and  pictorially  by  the  late  F.  Hopkin- 
son  Smith.  But  when  it  was  a  case  of  the 
dwelling  of  Eobert  Louis  Stevenson's  Mr. 
Hyde,  or  the  Upper  Baker  Street  rooms  shared 
by  Sherlock  Holmes  and  Dr.  Watson,  or  the 
Gunnison  Street  of  Kipling's  "The  Eecord  of 
Badalia  Herodsfoot,"  the  writer  was  thrown 
upon  his  own  resources.  In  those  cases  there 
were  new  trails  to  be  blazed.  So  also  in  Paris 
were  new  trails  to  be  blazed  when  the  writer 
started  out  in  the  hunt'  for  this  or  that  street 
or  domicile  associated  with  some  chapter  of 
Balzac's  La  Comedie  Humaine,  or  to  follow  the 
knightly  rambles  in  the  Seventeenth  Century 
Lutetia  of  the  immortal  four  of  the  elder  Du- 
mas, or  to  take  up  with  the  relentlessness  of 
Javert  the  pursuit  of  Jean  Valjean  in  his  flight 
from  the  home  near  the  southern  barriers  of 


INTRODUCTION  xxi 

the  city  skirting  the  Latin  Quarter,  across  the 
river,  to  the  refuge  he  finally  found  in  the  Con- 
vent of  the  Little  Picpus.  For  at  that  time  the 
late  Benjamin  Ellis  Martin's  The  Stones  of 
Paris  had  not  yet  been  printed.  These  ram- 
bles abroad  led  to  the  rambles  at  home.  Why 
should  not  some  one,  was  the  inevitable  thought, 
try  to  do  for  some  great  American  city  what 
had  been  done  for  the  London  of  Dickens  and 
Thackeray?  Of  course  there  were  no  really 
great  dominant  figures,  but  the  trail  of  the 
novelist  in  bulk  was  sure  to  be  worth  while. 
That  New  York  was  the  city  chosen  was  due  to 
the  fact  that  it  was  the  city  that  offered  the 
most,  and  the  city  best  known  and  most  easily 
accessible  to  the  writer.  The  papers  written 
in  the  summer  of  1899  under  the  title  of  New 
York  in  Fiction  appeared  serially  in  the  fol- 
lowing autumn,  and  later  in  a  volume  which 
has  long  been  out  of  print.  That  they  did 
something,  that  they  did  a  great  deal  toward 
stimulating  the  cult  of  local  colour  the  writer 
does  not  hesitate  to  affirm.  Though  little  more 
than  seventeen  years  have  passed  the  New 
York  of  the  novelists  to-day  offers  fully  three 


xxii  INTRODUCTION 

times  as  much  as  it  did  then.  Hence  this  new 
pilgrimage,  in  which  the  writer  has  attempted 
to  show  the  rapidly  changing  city,  both  as  it 
appeared  then,  and  as  it  is  seen  now  by  the  nov- 
elists of  the  new  generation. 


PART  I 

THE  CANONS  OP  THE  MONEY  GRUBBERS 


THE  NEW  YORK  OF   THE 
NOVELISTS 

CHAPTER  I 

When  the  Town  Was  Young— The  City  of  Irving,  Cooper, 
Poe,  and  Their  Contemporaries. 

POBE  over  the  old  prints  and  maps.  Turn  the 
pages  of  the  old  diaries.  A  little  imagination 
and  there  comes  into  being  the  city  that  was, 
the  restful,  sedate,  Knickerbockerish  town,  that 
knew  the  genial  Irving,  and  the  irascible 
Cooper,  and  the  saturnine  Poe,  and  Paulding, 
and  Halleck,  and  Drake,  and  McDonald  Clarke, 
the  "Mad  Poet,"  and  a  score  more.  How  re- 
mote it  seems  from  the  tumultuous  New  York 
of  to-day.  Here  is  a  small  section  of  the  city 
map  of  1827.  The  very  names  of  the  streets 
— Herring  Street,  Eaisin  Street,  Burrows 
Street — have  passed  into  oblivion.  To  the 
east  of  Broadway,  on  a  line  with  St.  Paul's 
Chapel,  there  stretches  to-day  a  region  that  is 
known,  and  has  for  many  years  been  known, 

3 


4  THE  NEW  YORK 

as  "the  Swamp. "  It  smells  atrociously  of 
leather.  When  Washington  Irving  was  a 
youth,  back  in  the  last  years  of  the  eighteenth 
century,  there  was  in  the  neighbourhood  a  hill 
known  as  Golden  Hill.  It  was  a  very  beautiful 
place,  so  the  chroniclers  tell  us,  and  upon  the 
hilltop  was  an  inn  that  had  been  much  fre- 
quented by  the  patriots  in  the  Eevolutionary 
days.  The  lane  that  climbed  over  the  grain 
covered  hill  is  there  yet.  It  is  now  William 
Street.  In  a  house  on  the  side  of  Golden  Hill 
Irving  was  born  in  1783,  and  in  this  region  he 
spent  his  boyhood.  In  the  nearby  Ann  Street 
he  went  to  school,  and  later  was  a  law  clerk. 
There  he  did  his  first  writing,  the  sketches 
signed  "Jonathan  Oldstyle,"  and  with  his 
brother  William  and  James  K.  Paulding  laid 
the  foundations  of  the  Salmagundi.  There  also 
he  wrote  most  of  the  Knickerbocker  History  of 
New  York.  In  1815  Irving  left  New  York  for 
seventeen  years  of  European  wandering.  He 
had  known  a  town  of  one  hundred  thousand  in- 
habitants. He  returned  to  find  a  city  of  twice 
that  size.  The  Coffee  House  at  Broadway  and 
Thames  Street  that  he  remembered  had  been 


OF  THE  NOVELISTS  5 

replaced  by  the  City  Hotel.  The  changed  ap- 
pearance of  the  streets  puzzled  him ;  the  houses 
seemed  amazingly  tall.  He  went  to  live  down 
near  the  Battery,  at  number  3  Bridge  Street, 
with  his  brother  Ebenezer,  who  had  been  the 
Captain  Greatheart  of  " Cockloft  Hall."  Far 
out  in  the  country,  overlooking  the  East  Eiver 
at  what  is  now  Eighty-eighth  Street — the  site 
of  the  present  East  Eiver  Park — was  the  home 
of  Irving 's  friend,  John  Jacob  Astor.  There 
Irving  stayed  as  a  guest;  there  he  wrote  As- 
toria, and  there  he  met  Captain  Bonneville 
and  his  friends.  At  the  corner  of  Seventeenth 
Street  and  Irving  Place  to-day  is  the  house, 
now  the  home  of  the  Authors'  League  of  Amer- 
ica, so  frequently  associated  with  Irving 's  name. 
An  old,  three  story  brick  house  painted  white, 
with  a  long  sheltered  balcony  overhanging  the 
sidewalk,  and  a  bay  window  looking  north  and 
west  to  Union  Square.  To  this  house  of  his 
nephew,  John  T.  Irving,  came  the  travelled  old 
writer  for  short  visits  to  town  in  the  late  forties. 
Here  he  wrote  portions  of  Oliver  Goldsmith, 
and  of  The  Life  of  Mahomet,  and  arranged  the 
notes  of  the  Life  of  Washington.  It  is  Wash- 


6  THE  NEW  YOKE 

ington  living's  last  New  York  home,  since  the 
passing  of  his  birthplace  on  Golden  Hill,  the 
family  "hive"  hard  by  the  Battery,  and  the 
rooms  he  occupied  in  Colonnade  Eow  in  Lafa- 
yette Place. 

The  City  Hotel,  which  Irving  found  on  his 
return  from  Europe  in  1832,  was  a  favourite 
haunt  of  the  author  of  the  "Leatherstocking 
Tales."  There  Cooper  organised  the  Bread 
and  Cheese  Club,  which  met  in  a  building  at  the 
corner  of  Broadway  and  Eeade  Street,  and 
which  derived  its  name  from  Cooper's  idea  of 
having  candidates  balloted  for  with  bread  and 
cheese,  a  bit  of  bread  favouring  election,  and 
cheese  deciding  against  it.  But  Cooper's  home 
life  in  New  York  centred  about  the  then  fash- 
ionable district  of  St.  John's  Park  in  lower 
Greenwich  Village.  In  1821  he  was  living  in 
Beach  Street.  The  success  of  The  Spy,  his 
second  novel,  had  made  him  a  conspicuous  man. 
From  Beach  Street  he  moved  to  345  Greenwich 
Street  where  he  began  the  "Leatherstocking 
Tales. ' '  There  he  wrote  The  Pioneers  and  The 
Last  of  the  Mohicans,  respectively  the  fourth 
and  second  books  chronologically  of  the  series. 


OF  THE  NOVELISTS  7 

In  1825  Cooper  went  to  Europe,  returning  in 
1832.  His  first  New  York  home  after  his  re- 
turn was  in  Bleecker  Street,  two  blocks  west  of 
Broadway.  He  did  not  remain  there  long  but 
moved  to  a  house  on  Broadway  at  Prince  Street 
that  later  gave  way  to  Niblo's  Garden.  Thence 
he  moved  to  the  house  in  St.  Mark's  Place 
where  he  wrote  Homeward  Bound  and  began 
the  struggle  with  his  critics  that  so  embittered 
his  later  days.  That  was  Cooper's  last  New 
York  home.  From  there  he  went  to  Coopers- 
town. 

The  name  of  Poe,  like  the  name  of  Cooper,  is 
associated  with  old  St.  John's.  The  author  of 
"The  Eaven"  drew  inspiration  from  wander- 
ing through  the  graveyard.  In  1837  he  lived 
near  by  in  a  little  wooden  house  that  was  num- 
bered 113  Carmine  Street.  He  was  then 
twenty-seven  years  old  and  had  just  resigned 
the  editorship  of  the  Southern  Literary  Mes- 
senger. From  Carmine  Street  Poe  and  his 
child  wife,  Virginia,  moved  to  a  house  in  Sixth 
Avenue,  near  Waverly  Place.  There  was  writ- 
ten ' '  The  Fall  of  the  House  of  Usher. ' '  There 
were  some  years  of  absence  from  New  York, 


8      NEW  YOEK  OF  THE  NOVELISTS 

and  then,  in  1844,  Poe  returned  to  the  city  to 
work  on  the  Evening  Mirror  and  to  live  in  what 
was  then  Bloomingdale  Village,  in  a  house  on 
a  high  bluff  which  corresponds  to  one  of  the 
present  Eighties  between  Broadway  and  West 
End  Avenue.  In  this  home  were  written  t '  The 
Raven"  and  "The  Imp  of  the  Perverse." 
Then  he  left  the  Mirror  for  the  Broadway  Jour- 
nal, and  for  greater  convenience  went  to  live  in 
Amity  Street,  which  afterwards  became  West 
Third  Street.  The  next  step,  taken  in  1846, 
was  the  move  to  the  Fordham  Cottage.  There 
the  child  wife  died,  and  there  for  two  years  Poe 
continued  to  live  lonely  and  almost  alone.  In 
the  summer  of  1849  he  left  Fordham.  He  was 
dead  before  the  year's  close. 


CHAPTER  II 

The  Battery — Bowling  Green — Old  Wall  Street — Bun- 
ner's  New  York — Jacob  Dolph's  House. 

OF  that  city  of  the  poets  and  novelists  of  the 
first  half  of  the  century  there  is  but  little  trace. 
The  quaint  homes  of  the  people  of  Irving 's 
Knickerbocker  History  of  New  York  belong  to 
the  irrevocable  past;  the  Broadway  of  which 
Paulding,  Halleck,  Willis,  Drake  and  Clarke, 
the  "mad  poet,"  sung  is  very  different  from  the 
Broadway  of  the  year  1916.  We  can  find  traces 
of  the  Fordham  Cottage  of  Edgar  Allan  and 
Virginia  Poe,  and  follow  Cooper's  Harvey 
Birch  through  rapidly  changing  Westchester, 
but  the  New  York  of  brick  and  stone  belongs 
essentially  to  the  work  of  the  younger  literary 
generation. 

In  the  name  of  Henry  Cuyler  Bunner  is  a  link 
connecting  the  remote  past  and  the  present. 
Among  the  men  who  seem  so  thoroughly  enam- 
oured of  the  city's  history  and  traditions  as  to 
have  been  strongly  moved  by  its  rush  and  tur- 

9 


10  THE  NEW  YORK 

moil  and  perplexity,   Bunner  is   unique.    He 
once  wrote  somewhere: 

Why  do  I  love  New  York,  my  dear  ? 
I  know  not.    Were  my  father  here — 
And  his — and  HIS — the  three  and  I 
Might,  perhaps,  make  you  some  reply. 

His  affection  for  the  old  town  was  very  pro- 
found and  sincere.  He  felt  very  keenly  the  sig- 
nificance of  the  phrase,  " little  old  New  York" 
— a  phrase  which,  though  applied  to  a  city  that 
was  not  so  very  old,  and  was  certainly  not  little, 
was  none  the  less  sincere  and  sympathetic.  In 
his  books  he  made  us  feel  how  much  he  would 
have  liked  to  see  the  old  beaux  with  their  bell- 
crown  hats  ogling  the  crinolined  ladies  on  lower 
Broadway  of  a  spring  or  a  summer  afternoon. 
How  he  pored  over  the  old  chronicles  in  the 
hope  of  seeing  the  ghosts  of  old  vanities  and 
follies  and  wickednesses  rise  up  out  of  their 
graves  and  dance,  smirk  and  gibber  again! 

Bunner  seemed  to  be  equally  at  home  in  the 
old  town,  in  Greenwich  village  and  about  Wash- 
ington Square.  In  one  of  his  later  poems  he 
told  us  of  "The  Red  Box  at  Vesey  Street,"  and 
its  part  in  the  human  comedy  of  New  York  life. 


OF  THE  NOVELISTS  11 

The  scenes  of  The  Midge  will  be  described  in 
another  chapter;  the  houses  and  streets  of  the 
first  part  of  The  Story  of  a  New  York  House 
belong  to  old  New  York.  The  house  in  which 
Jacob  Dolph  the  elder  lived  during  the  first 
years  of  the  century,  and  from  the  pillared  bal- 
cony of  which  his  family  and  friends  looked 
out  and  down  on  the  glinting  waters  of  the 
bay,  is  one  of  the  few  noble  structures  that  are 
left  to  us  of  the  older  city.  Bunner's  choice  is 
easily  understood.  Even  now  the  Mission  of 
Our  Lady  of  the  Eosary,  a  home  for  Irish  im- 
migrant girls,  No.  7  State  Street,  despite  the 
incongruity  of  the  neighbouring  edifices,  im- 
presses one  as  having  been  in  its  day  the  fitting 
mansion  of  a  merchant  prince  of  old  Manhattan. 
The  former  grandeur  of  the  locality  is  gone,  the 
air  shrill  with  the  rush  and  clatter  of  the  ele- 
vated trains,  the  clanging  of  cable  bells,  the 
rattle  of  heavily  laden  trucks,  the  surrounding 
streets  are  grimy  and  dirty,  but  the  old  house 
attracts  and  holds  attention  by  its  sedate  dig- 
nity. The  original  builder,  or  the  architect 
who  designed  it,  probably  changed  his  plans 
more  than  once  in  the  course  of  building.  It 


12  THE  NEW  YOEK 

is  supported  by  three  tall  rude  columns  of  stone 
and  stucco.  The  windows  of  the  second  story 
are  thrown  in  shadow  by  the  peculiar  curve  of 
the  upper  balcony.  From  the  State  Street 
sidewalk  stone  steps  lead  up  to  the  entrance  on 
both  sides.  Over  the  iron  railing  is  the  gilded 
cross  of  the  Mission.1 

A  few  doors  away,  at  No.  17  State  Street, 
was  the  home  of  William  Irving,  Washington 
Irving 's  elder  brother,  and  of  J.  K.  Paulding — 
a  meeting  place  for  the  literary  wits  of  the  pe- 
riod. William  Irving  was  the  "  Pindar  Cock- 
loft "  of  Salmagundi,  and  No.  17  was  known  as 
Cockloft  Hall.  It  was  only  a  few  hundred 
yards  away  by  the  water  front  of  Battery  Park 
that,  half  a  century  later,  the  Jacob  Dolph  who 
in  1807  was  a  little  boy  attending  Mrs.  Kil- 

i  In  1804,  which,  according  to  Mr.  Bunner's  story,  was  the 
period  of  the  occupancy  of  Jacob  Dolph;  the  house  was  really 
tenanted  by  William  Van  Vredenburgh,  who  had  served  under 
Washington  with  the  rank  of  Colonel.  The  Van  Vredenburghs 
emigrated  not  to  Greenwich  Village,  but  to  the  Valley  of  the 
Mohawk,  embarking  for  their  journey  in  a  sloop  at  the  foot 
of  Whitehall  Street.  Among  the  Onondaga  Indians  of  the 
Mohawk,  the  erstwhile  continental  officer  was  known  as  "The 
Great  Clear  Sky."  In  a  letter  before  the  present  writer  when 
this  note  was  written  there  were  the  words,  "The  great-grand- 
daughter of  the  Colonel  now  sits  opposite  me,  absorbed  in 
the  perusal  of  A  New  York  House." 


OF  THE  NOVELISTS  13 

master's  private  school  on  Ann  Street,  fell  to 
the  ground  with  the  apoplectic  stroke  that 
brought  about  his  death.  Mr.  Howells  wrote 
of  the  Battery  in  Their  Wedding  Journey  and 
in  A  Hazard  of  New  Fortunes;  and  Edmund 
Clarence  Stedman  was  among  the  poets  who 
found  in  it  poetical  inspiration. 

Eetracing  our  steps  across  the  Park,  we 
leave  State  Street,  turn  into  Whitehall  Street, 
move  northward  past  Bowling  Green,  where, 
before  the  days  of  the  new  Custom  House,  on 
the  site  of  one  of  the  steamship  offices  that  so 
long  lined  the  southern  side  of  the  triangle, 
Martin  Krieger's  tavern  stood,  and  where  the 
bruised  and  mutilated  iron  palings  stand  mute 
witnesses  of  patriotic  scorn  for  the  crest  and 
features  of  King  George. 

Jacob  Dolph,  to  revert  to  Bunner's  story, 
had  a  naive  belief  in  the  city's  future,  and 
builded  fine  day-dreams  of  a  New  York  that  was 
to  reach  far  beyond  the  City  Hall,  beyond  Rich- 
mond Hill,  perhaps  even  as  far  as  the  Parade  it- 
self. He  strenuously  opposed  the  plan  to  have 
the  north  end  of  the  new  City  Hall,  which  in 
1807  was  in  the  course  of  erection,  constructed 


14  THE  NEW  YOKK 

of  cheap  red  stone,  in  the  face  of  the  popular 
belief  that  only  a  few  suburbans  would  ever 
look  down  on  it  from  above  Chambers  Street. 
In  the  first  decade  of  the  century  the  phrase 
"from  the  Battery  to  Bull's  Head"  was  a  fine 
and  effective  hyperbole.  Part  of  the  Bull's 
Head  Tavern  still  stood  until  a  few  years  ago 
on  the  northeast  corner  of  Third  Avenue  and 
Twenty-fourth  Street.  When  the  Commission- 
ers made  the  aforementioned  map,  Wall  Street 
was  already  typical.  The  Stock  Exchange  had 
been  in  existence  almost  ten  years,  and  the 
street  which  in  the  earlier  colonial  times  had 
marked  the  northern  boundary  of  the  Dutch 
New  Amsterdam  became,  almost  immediately, 
to  a  certain  extent  the  pulse  of  the  nation's 
finance.  Since  that  time  there  has  been  no 
thoroughfare  so  widely  used  and  so  roundly 
abused  by  the  maker  of  New  York  fiction — 
scarcely  one  of  them  but  at  some  time  has 
taken  his  stand  on  the  Broadway  sidewalk  in 
front  of  old  Trinity  and  shouted  his  dismal  de- 
nunciation. The  heroes  and  heroines  of  Amer- 
ican fiction  very  often  achieve  fabulous  wealth 
through  speculation;  apparently  worthless  se- 


OF  THE  NOVELISTS  15 

curities  bought  for  a  mere  song  and  laid  away 
in  deposit  vaults,  or,  better  still,  in  old  attic 
trunks  or  musty  cupboards  or  woollen  stock- 
ings, and  forgotten,  soar  skyward  on  the  Pin- 
daric wings  of  romance ;  but  Wall  Street  in  the 
guise  of  the  Fairy  Godmother  somehow  never 
gets  its  due.  This  is  the  significant  distinction, 
that  in  fiction  fortune  comes  to  men  and  women 
through  " lucky  speculation,"  ruin  through 
Wall  Street. 


CHAPTER  III 

Other  Trails  of  Yesterday — Janvier — Warner — Crawford 
— Mrs.  Barr — Admiral  Porter. 

LEAVING  for  a  minute  the  men  and  women  of 
Bunner's  story,  the  vicinity  conjures  up  the 
people  of  Charles  Dudley  Warner's  Golden 
House;  the  Brights,  Bemans,  Lauderdales, 
Ealstons  of  Marion  Crawford's  novels  of  New 
York  life;  the  hero  of  Thomas  Janvier's  At  the 
Casa  Napoleon,  who  day  after  day  took  his 
stand  at  the  southwest  corner  of  Broad  and 
Wall  Streets  to  study  idly  the  great  statue  of 
Washington  on  the  stone  steps  of  the  Sub- 
Treasury,  and  build  fine  day-dreams  of  the 
three  thousand  dollar  clerkship  that  never 
seem  to  come  true.  Joris  Van  Heemskirk,  of 
whom  Mrs.  Barr  told  us  in  The  Bow  of  Orange 
Ribbon,  was  an  important  figure  in  the  Wall 
Street  of  1765.  A  two-storied  house  at  the 
lower  end  of  Pearl  Street  was  the  home  of  Jacob 
Cohen  and  his  granddaughter  Miriam.  The 
Kalchook,  or  Kalch  Hoek,  where  Captain  Hyde 

16 


ENTERING    THE    GREAT    CANONS    OF    THE    MONEY    GRUBBING    TRIBE 


NEW  YOEK  OF  THE  NOVELISTS     1? 

and  Neil  Semple  fought  their  duel,  was  a  hill  of 
considerable  elevation,  to  the  west  of  the  pres- 
ent line  of  Broadway.  Its  southern  boundary 
was  about  Warren  Street,  its  northern  bound- 
ary about  Canal.  The  district  lying  at  its  base 
was  a  fever-breeding  marsh  until  drained  by 
Anthony  Kutgers.  Afterward  it  was  known  as 
Lispenard  Meadows,  from  Kutgers 's  daughter, 
Mrs.  Lispenard.  The  little  lake  or  pond  at  its 
foot  was  called  first  Kalk-Hook,  and  afterward 
became  known  as  the  Collect  Pond.  The  cor- 
ner of  Broadway  and  Franklin  Street  marks 
what  was  then  the  summit  of  the  Kalchook  HilL 
The  slope  is  still  perceptible.  The  speculations 
that  swept  away  all  that  was  left  of  the  once 
great  Dolph  family  estate  in  the  panic  of  1873 
were  conducted  in  an  office  on  William  Street, 
near  where  the  Cotton  Exchange  now  stands. 
On  Front  Street  was  the  wholesale  grocery 
firm,  "  Files  and  Nelson, "  of  which  Thomas 
Bailey  Aldrich  wrote  in  My  Cousin  the  Colonel. 
The  ship-chandlering  firm  of  Abram  Van  Eiper 
and  Son,  whence  Eustace  Dolph  fled  a  forger, 
and  where  the  delightful  Mr.  Daw,  a  very  Dick- 
ensy  creation,  once  tried  a  rolled-top  desk  and 


18  THE  NEW  YOEK 

a  revolving  chair  to  his  alarm  and  discomfiture, 
was  on  Water  Street.  Of  Mrs.  Kilmaster's  pri- 
vate school  on  Ann  Street,  attended  by  Jacob 
Dolph  the  second,  or  of  the  Van  Eiper  mansion 
on  Pine  Street,  opposite  the  great  Burril  House, 
of  course  no  traces  remain.  Bay,  the  hero  of 
William  Dean  Howells  's  World  of  Chance,  com- 
ing to  seek  his  fortune  in  New  York,  noted  first 
from  the  deck  of  the  North  Kiver  ferryboat 
"the  mean,  ugly  fronts  and  roofs  of  the  build- 
ings beyond,  and  hulking  high  overhead  in 
farther  distance  in  vast  bulks  and  clumsy  tow- 
ers the  masses  of  those  ten-story  edifices  which 
are  the  necessity  of  commerce  and  the  despair 
of  art.' ' 

The  men  who  figure  in  the  first  part  of  The 
Story  of  a  New  York  House  were  in  the  habit 
of  meeting  to  discuss  trade  and  politics  in  the 
barber  shop  of  one  Huggins.  This  shop  was 
on  the  northeast  corner  of  Broadway  and  Wall 
Street,  the  site  now  occupied  by  the  First  Na- 
tional Bank  Building,  a  structure  which  has  been 
in  existence  less  than  forty  years.  In  one  of  the 
old  office  buildings  that  formerly  occupied  the 
same  site  was  Ugly  Hall,  the  headquarters  of 


OF  THE  NOVELISTS  19 

the  Ugly  Club,  a  literary  organisation,  of  which 
Halleck  was  a  leading  member.  The  entrance 
to  Huggins  's  barber  shop  was  about  on  the  spot 
now  marked  by  the  first  Broadway  door  of  the 
bank  building.  Before  the  yellow-fever  plague 
of  1822,  the  fashionable  residence  quarter  of 
the  city  was  about  Bowling  Green,  Water, 
Pearl,  Beaver,  Broad,  Whitehall  Streets  and 
the  lower  end  of  Broadway.  Merchants,  shop- 
keepers, lawyers,  as  a  rule,  resided  over  their 
offices  and  stores.  Mr.  Charles  H.  Haswell,  in 
his  Reminiscences  of  an  Octogenarian  in  the 
City  of  New  York,  spoke  of  the  "Dutch-designed 
and  Dutch-built  houses,"  with  sharply  pitched 
roofs  and  gable  ends  to  the  street,  that  were 
at  that  day  remaining  in  Broad  Street.  The 
plague  drove  people  to  the  open  fields  that  lay 
between  the  city  proper  and  Greenwich  village. 
One  night  during  this  period,  when  the  sky  was 
red  with  the  light  of  the  tar  barrels  that  were 
being  burned  in  Ann  Street,  Mrs.  Jacob  Dolph 
was  buried  in  the  churchyard  of  St.  Paul's.  In 
Chambers  Street,  opposite  the  north  end  of  City 
Hall,  was,  in  1820,  the  office  of  the  Chief  of 
Police,  where  Allan  Dare  (Admiral  Porter  'a 


20    NEW  YOEK  OF  THE  NOVELISTS 

Allan  Dare  and  Robert  le  Diable)  made  Ms  first 
appearance  on  the  stage  of  that  story.  Farther 
up  Broadway,  in  an  office  building  near  Worth 
Street,  was  the  one-room  law  office  of  Peter — 
afterward  the  Honourable  Peter  Stirling.  At 
the  Duane  Street  corner,  adjoining  the  grounds 
of  the  New  York  Hospital,  was  the  cigar  store 
of  John  Anderson,  which  Edgar  Allan  Poe's 
story  of  The  Mystery  of  Marie  Eoget  assured 
a  permanent  place  among  the  scenes  of  New 
York  fiction. 


CHAPTEE  IV 

Gateways  of  Invasion — Approaching  the  Skyline — Kip- 
ling's Dimbula— 0.  Henry's  Little  Old  Bagdad  on  the  Sub- 
way. 

A  CENTUBY  and  more  has  passed  since  Jacob 
Dolph  of  Bunner's  The  Story  of  a  New  York 
House  used  to  sit  on  his  balcony  in  the  long 
summer  evenings,  and  build  dreams  of  the  city's 
future  as  he  looked  across  Battery  Park  and 
out  over  the  dancing  waters  of  the  Upper  Bay. 
At  that  time  his  house  was  a  monument  to  be 
pointed  out  by  those  on  the  deck  of  the  mer- 
chantmen entering  the  port.  The  house  is  still 
there.  But  from  the  incoming  Mauretania,  or 
St.  Paul,  or  France,  you  would  be  hard  put 
to  find  it,  be  your  eyes  ever  so  sharp.  In  the 
towering  jungle  of  steel,  and  stone,  and  ma- 
sonry, it  is  no  more  than  a  little  shrub.  The 
contrast  between  what  was  and  what  is  can 
hardly  be  called  the  epitome  of  the  hundred 
years.  For  rightly,  in  accordance  with  the 

spirit  of  the  city,  No.  7  State  Street  should  have 

21 


22 


THE  NEW  YORK 


undergone  a  series  of  transformations,  in  the 
course  of  which  the  original  three-story  house 
would  have  been  torn  down  and  replaced  by  a 
structure  of  seven  stories,  which  in  turn  would 


A    PASSING    GATEWAY    OF    INVASION 

have  given  way  to  an  edifice  of  fifteen  stories, 
and  then — but  who  knows  how  far  up  that  mar- 
vellous sky  line  that  greets  the  eyes  of  the  home 
comer  and  the  new  comer  will  have  reached  in 


OF  THE  NOVELISTS  23 

the  year  of  Grace  1925?  Who  or  what  the  ob- 
server is  matters  but  little.  It  is  the  city  that 
counts ;  the  city,  ugly  or  beautiful,  as  you  will, 
but  never  commonplace.  The  city  that  may 
mean  welcome,  or  may  mean  loneliness,  or  op- 
portunity, or  danger,  or  refuge,  or  despair. 
The  Narrows  are  passed,  and  there  it  is  behind 
the  Statue  of  Liberty.  Perhaps  it  is  the  soul 
of  the  Dimbula,  Eudyard  Kipling's  "The  Ship 
that  Found  Herself "  that  speaks.  But  in  the 
Dimbula  the  spectacle  roused  only  the  overpow- 
ering desire  for  self-assertion,  for  the  song  of 
achievement.  "Oyez!  Oyez!  Oyez!  Princes, 
Dukes,  and  Barons  of  the  High  Seas!  Know 
ye  by  these  presents,  we  are  the  Dimbula,  fif- 
teen days  nine  hours  from  Liverpool,  having 
crossed  the  Atlantic  with  four  thousand  tons 
of  cargo  for  the  first  time  in  our  career!  We 
have  not  foundered.  We  are  here.  'Eer! 
'Eer !  We  are  not  disabled.  But  we  have  had 
a  time  wholly  unparalleled  in  the  annals  of  ship- 
building !  Our  decks  were  swept !  We  pitched ; 
we  rolled!  We  thought  we  were  going  to  die! 
Hi !  Hi !  But  we  didn't.  We  wish  to  give  no- 
tice that  we  have  come  to  New  York  all  the  way 


24  THE  NEW  YORK 

across  the  Atlantic  through  the  worst  weather 
in  the  world ;  and  we  are  the  Dimbula!  We  are- 
arr-ha-ha-ha-r-r-r ! "  A  natural  and  pardona- 
ble exuberance.  But  perhaps  on  her  second 
trip  westward  the  Dimbula  had  calmed  down 
to  the  point  where  some  consideration  of  the 
city  itself  was  possible,  and  New  York  was  com- 
pared to  Liverpool,  and  voted  rather  "  ripping " 
or  the  reverse. 

Of  the  writing  men  and  women  of  the  newer 
generation,  the  men  and  women  whose  trails  are 
the  subject  of  this  rambling  book,  there  are 
many  who  have  staked  claims  to  certain  New 
York  streets  or  quarters.  There  has  been  but 
one  conqueror  of  Alexander-like  ambitions. 
That  is,  of  course,  the  late  0.  Henry,  and  Sidney 
Porter's  name  will  naturally  appear  again  and 
again  in  this  and  in  ensuing  pages.  To  north, 
east,  south,  and  west,  stretch  his  trails ;  to  north, 
east,  south,  and  west,  he  wandered  like  a  modern 
Haroun  al  Easchid.  And  like  a  conqueror  he 
rechristened  the  city  to  suit  his  whimsical 
humour.  At  one  moment  it  is  his  "Little  Old 
Bagdad  on  the  Subway ";  at  another,  "The  City 
of  Too  Many  Caliphs  ";  at  another  "  Noisy ville 


OF  THE  NOVELISTS  25 


on  the  Hudson ";  or,  "Wolfville  on  the  Sub- 
way ";  or,  ''The  City  of  Chameleon  Changes.'' 
Bunner,  as  he  told  us  in  certain  lines  already 
quoted,  had  inherited  New  York  from  his  father, 
his  grandfather,  and  his  great  grandfather. 
Sidney  Porter  discovered  the  city  comparatively 
late  in  life,  lived  in  it  but  the  few  brief  last  years. 
"Pull  up  the  shades,"  he  whispered  a  few  min- 
utes before  the  end  came,  "I  don't  want  to  go 
home  in  the  dark."  Perhaps  also  he  did  not 
want  to  go  home  without  one  last  glimpse  of  the 
city  that  he  had  learned  to  love  so  well ;  one  last 
glimpse  of  his  "Little  Old  Bagdad  on  the  Sub- 
way," his  "City  of  Too  Many  Caliphs." 

But  turn,  for  the  moment,  in  the  approach  to 
the  city,  to  the  grotesque.  There  is  a  very  hu- 
man note  in  the  emotions  roused  in  the  breasts 
of  Abe  Potash  and  Moe  Griesman  by  the  sight 
of  the  metropolis  of  their  adoption  as  they  view 
it  from  the  steamer  deck  after  their  return  from 
their  European  trip  as  told  in  Mr.  Montague 
Glass's  "The  Judgment  of  Paris."  There,  on 
the  dock,  Eosie  was  waiting  for  her  Abe,  to  be- 
stow upon  him  a  series  of  kisses  that  re-echoed 
down  the  long  pier.  That  pier,  contiguous  piers, 


26  THE  NEW  YORK 

and  similar  piers  across  the  North  and  East 
Rivers,  play  their  parts  in  every  third  or  fourth 
novel  that  touches  on  New  York  life.  The  note 
may  be  grave  or  gay,  trivial  or  comparatively 
important.  Denoting  departure,  these  piers  are 
the  gateways  to  adventure.  A  hero  from  one  of 
Mr.  George  Barr  McCutcheon's  novels  walks 
lightly  down  the  gang-plank  to  the  deck  of  the 
ship  that  is  to  bear  him  away  to  love-making, 
and  intrigue,  and  the  clash  of  battle  in  the  some- 
where principality  of  Graustark.  A  brave  little 
heroine  from  Mrs.  Frances  Hodgson  Burnett's 
pages  embarks  on  a  journey  that  is  quite  as 
knightly,  although  it  takes  her  no  farther  than 
the  pleasant,  peaceful  English  countryside. 
The  painter  hero  of  Richard  Harding  Davis 's 
The  Princess  Aline  begins  the  whimsical  pur- 
suit that  takes  him  over  half  Europe,  loses  him 
a  dream,  but  wins  him  very  material  happiness. 
In  a  word,  in  the  picture  that  is  presented  by  the 
sailing  of  any  big  transatlantic  liner  you  have  a 
picture  that,  with  certain  variations,  is  conven- 
tional to  the  novel  touching  the  social  side  of  the 
city  life,  whether  the  author  be  Mrs.  Wharton, 
or  Mrs.  Burnett,  or  Mrs.  Riggs,  or  Mr.  Davis, 


OF  THE  NOVELISTS  27 

or  Mr.  Chambers,  or  Mr.  Johnson,  or  Mr. 
McCutcheon,  or  any  of  a  score  more.  But  the 
pier  of  the  transatlantic  liner  is  but  one  of  the 
gateways  of  invasion. 

Probably  in  all  fiction  there  is  no  single  epi- 
sode that  has  left  an  impression  on  succeeding 
generations  of  story  spinners  more  obvious  than 
that  in  Balzac's  Pere  Goriot  where  Eugene  de 
Eastignac,  from  the  heights  of  the  cemetery  of 
Pere  La  Chaise,  bids  defiance  to  Paris — "a  nous 
deux,  maintenant!"  In  the  New  York  of  the 
novelists  the  episode  has  been  constantly  imi- 
tated. The  young  hero  (we  might  for  example 
say  that  it  is  Frank  Sartain  of  Brander  Mat- 
thews's  A  Confident  To-morrow}  sees  the  big 
city  for  the  first  time  at  night.  From  the  deck 
of  a  ferry  boat  crossing  from  the  New  Jersey 
shore  he  beholds  the  great  towers  of  glittering 
light.  His  heart  beats  fast  at  the  thought  of 
the  coming  struggle.  "I  will  conquer  you !"  he 
whispers  to  himself,  "or  I  will  die  in  the  at- 
tempt." Or  perhaps  the  second  or  third  night 
after  his  arrival  the  vision  comes  to  him  and  he 
feels  the  thrill  of  conflict.  The  vastness  and  the 
indifference  of  the  city  have  for  the  moment 


IN  WASHINGTON  STREET,  FAB  DOWN  ON  THE  LOWER 
WEST  SIDE  OF  MANHATTAN  ISLAND,  THERE  HAS 
BEEN,  FOR  THE  LAST  FIFTEEN  YEARS,  A  CURIOUS 
LITTLE  SYRIAN  COLONY.  IN  FICTION  IT  HAS  BEEN 
EXPLOITED  BY  MR.  NORMAN  DUNCAN  IN  HIS  VOL- 
UME ENTITLED  "SYRIAN  STORIES."  ABOUT  THE 
YEAR  1900  MR.  DUNCAN  WAS  A  WRITER  OF  "SPE- 
CIALS" FOR  THE  NEW  YORK  "EVENING  POST."  IT 
WAS  WHILE  DOING  THIS  WORK  THAT  HE  BEGAN  TO 
EXPLORE  THE  VARIOUS  "QUARTERS"  OF  THE  CITY, 
NOT  FROM  MERE  CURIOSITY,  BUT  BECAUSE  HE 
KEENLY  SAW  AND  APPRECIATED  THEIR  ARTISTIC 
SIDE.  THE  SYRIAN  QUARTER  HAD  A  SPECIAL  AP- 
PEAL TO  HIM.  HE  BECAME  INTIMATE  WITH  THE 
PRINCIPAL  MEN  OF  THE  COLONY,  AND  FORMED 

FRIENDSHIPS  WITH  SEVERAL  OF  THE  LEADERS. 
DISPUTES  WERE  REFERRED  TO  HIM  FOR  SETTLE- 
MENT, AND  HIS  ADVICE  WAS  SOUGHT  AND  FOL- 
LOWED. IN  A  WORD,  HE  BECAME  A  POWER  IN 
"LITTLE  SYRIA."  WHEN  THE  TURKISH  MINISTER 
TO  THE  UNITED  STATES  VISITED  THE  QUARTER  MR. 
DUNCAN  WAS  PRESENT  AT  THE  REQUEST  OF  THE 
LEADERS.  HE  MADE  THE  PRINCIPAL  SPEECH  OF 
THE  EVENING  AND  PRESENTED  TO  THE  TURKISH 
REPRESENTATIVES  THE  REQUESTS  OF  CERTAIN  AM- 
BITIOUS SYRIANS. 


NEW  YORK  OF  THE  NOVELISTS    29 

cowed  his  spirit.  The  solitude  of  his  hall  bed- 
room in  Chelsea  or  Greenwich  Village  has  be- 
come a  horror  to  him.  He  finds  himself  aim- 
lessly walking  the  streets  to  the  south  and  east. 
Then  he  is  in  the  middle  of  the  Brooklyn  Bridge, 
the  black  waters  beneath  him,  and  the  myriads 
of  lights  of  Manhattan  stretching  away  far  to 
the  north.  Ah,  those  myriads  of  lights!  In 
comparison  how  dim  seem  "the  lights  of  London 
flaring  like  a  dreary  dawn"  of  the  Tennysonian 
poem !  Some  day  let  the  New  Yorker  go  down 
to  the  end  of  the  long  dock  between  the  Erie  and 
Atlantic  Basins  in  Brooklyn,  and  turn  his  eyes 
toward  Manhattan.  Governor's  Island,  with  its 
thick  growth  of  trees,  seems  to  blend  and  merge 
with  the  lower  part  of  the  city,  hiding  all  but  the 
few  great  skyscrapers.  The  city  itself  is  gone. 
The  effect  is  that  of  an  enchanted  park  in  which 
it  has  pleased  some  mediaeval  giant  to  conjure 
up  vast  castles  of  fairy-like  beauty.  But  it  mat- 
ters not  from  where  you  have  seen  the  city,  so 
long  as  you  have  felt  once,  with  the  throbbing 
heart  of  so  many  heroes  and  heroines  of  fiction, 
the  spirit  of  invasion. 


CHAPTER  V 

The  Big  Canons  of  the  Money  Grubbing  Tribe—The 
Office  of  Carteret  and  Carteret — Wilton  Sargent :  American 
— Muldoon,  a  New  York  Horse. 

THE  heroine  is  always  an  uncertainty.  She  may 
be  grey-eyed  and  earnest,  with  a  leaning  to  set- 
tlement work,  or  she  may  have  no  ideals  or  as- 
pirations that  take  her  beyond  the  boundaries  of 
"Tea,  Tango  and  Toper  Land."  It  may  be  on 
the  Drive  that  you  meet  her  first,  or  along  the 
Park  bridle  path,  or  being  propelled  by  Afro- 
mobile  through  the  Jungle  at  Palm  Beach,  or  on 
the  links  of  Cannes,  or  in  Shepheard's  Hotel  in 
Cairo.  But  whether  his  business  be  stocks,  or 
leather,  or  cotton,  the  father  of  the  heroine,  pro- 
vided the  novel  be  one  of  New  York  life,  will 
spend  certain  hours  of  every  working  day  in 
his  office,  which  will  be  situated  somewhere  in 
the  Big  Canons  of  the  Money  Grubbing  Tribes. 
In  "Thimble,  Thimble, "  that  delightfully  whim- 
sical story  of  the  Old  Nigger  Man,  the  Hunting 
Case  Watch,  and  the  Open  Faced  Question,  0. 

30 


NEW  YORK  OF  THE  NOVELISTS    31 

Henry  gave  the  specific  directions  for  the  finding 
of  the  canons  in  general  and  the  office  of 
Carteret  and  Carter et,  Mill  Supplies  and 
Leather  Belting,  in  particular.  *  '  You  follow  the 
Broadway  trail  until  you  pass  the  Crosstown 
Line,  the  Bread  Line  and  the  Dead  Line,  and 
come  to  the  Big  Canons  of  the  Money  Grubbing 
Tribe.  Then  you  turn  to  the  left,  to  the  right, 
dodge  a  pushcart,  and  the  tongue  of  a  two-ton 
four-horse  dray,  and  hop,  skip,  and  jump  to  a 
granite  ledge  on  the  side  of  a  twenty-one  story 
synthetic  mountain  of  stone  and  iron.  In  the 
twelfth  story  is  the  office  of  Carteret  and  Car- 
teret." For  the  benefit  of  those  readers  who 
are  not  familiar  with  New  York  and  its  argot,  it 
may  be  said  that  by  the  Crosstown  Line  is  meant 
Fourteenth  Street,  the  Bread  Line  Eleventh 
Street,  and  the  Dead  Line,  Fulton  Street,  below 
which  thoroughfare  no  professional  criminal 
may  go  without  making  himself  liable  to  arrest. 
Very  luckily  for  the  purposes  of  the  novelist, 
what  has  become  known  as  the  malefactor  of 
great  wealth  is  not  yet  subject  to  this  particular 
restriction.  Tom  Scribe  has  been  at  liberty  to 
populate  these  canons  to  his  heart's  content, 


32  THE  NEW  YOEK 

with  the  result  that  from  the  Battery  to  the  Dead 
Line  fiction  stalks.  Just  the  list  of  the  finan- 
ciers of  the  world  of  make-believe  who  have 
occupied  the  expensive  and  extravagantly 
equipped  offices  of  this  part  of  Manhattan  would 
fill  a  chapter.  It  is  hard  to  know  where  to 
begin,  or  what  order  to  follow.  The  pilgrim 
has  but  to  take  his  stand  on  the  steps  of  the  new 
Custom  House  that  replaced  the  row  of  red- 
brick buildings  on  Bowling  Green  that  a  decade 
ago  were  the  offices  of  the  transatlantic  steam- 
ship lines  and  gaze  northward  between  the  great 
walls  of  steel  and  concrete.  There,  over  on  the 
right,  is  No.  26  Broadway.  That  is  not  a  mere 
indication  of  a  number  and  a  street.  No.  26 
Broadway  has  come  to  stand  for  the  Standard 
Oil  Company  as  much  as  Downing  Street  stands 
for  the  British  Government  or  the  Quai  d'Orsay 
for  the  French  Government.  Somewhere  in  one 
of  the  great  adjoining  skyscrapers  are  the  offices 
of  Wilton  Sargent  of  Eudyard  Kipling's  "An 
Error  in  the  Fourth  Dimension."  To  reach 
them  he  travelled  down  the  Hudson  on  his 
twelve-hundred-ton  ocean-going  steam  yacht 
Columbia,  and  from  Bleecker  Street  by  the  Ele- 


OF  THE  NOVELISTS  33 

vated,  hanging  on  to  a  leather  strap  between  an 
Irish  washerwoman  and  a  German  anarchist. 
Once,  at  Holt  Hangars,  he  tried  to  make  himself 
an  Englishman.  But  the  Induna  of  the  Great 
Buchonian  line  was  stopped — "for  the  first  time 
since  King  Charles  hid  in  her  smoke-stack " — 
such  was  the  picturesque  exaggeration  of  the 
offender — and  Wilton  Sargent  once  more  as- 
sumed allegiance  to  the  land  of  his  birth,  which 
had  reviled  him.  Nor,  with  the  Kipling  trail 
for  the  moment  in  mind,  shall  we  overlook,  while 
the  Battery  and  West  Street  are  close  by,  the 
Belt  Line  of  horse-drawn  surface  cars.  On  that 
line,  as  told  in  "A  Walking  Delegate,"  served 
Muldoon,  born  in  Iowa,  but  to  end  his  equine 
days  swearing  by  the  New  York  of  his  adop- 
tion. "Any  horse  dat  knows  beans  gits  outer 
Kansas  'fore  dey  crip  his  shoes,"  Muldoon  de- 
fiantly told  the  yellow  frame  house  of  a  horse, 
trying  to  rouse  the  spirit  of  rebellion  against  the 
tyrant  man.  ' '  I  blew  in  dere  from  loway  in  de 
days  o'  me  youth  an'  innocence  an'  I  wuz  grate- 
ful when  dey  boxed  me  for  N'  York.  Yer  can't 
tell  me  anything  about  Kansas  I  don't  wanter 
fergit.  De  Belt  Line  stables  ain't  no  Hoffman 


34  THE  NEW  YORK 

House,  but  dey're  Vanderbilts    'long  side  o' 
Kansas. " 

To  resume  the  Broadway  trail.  On  the  nine- 
teenth floor  of  one  of  these  mammoth  structures 
towering  above  Battery  Park  were  the  offices, 
commanding  a  superb  view  of  the  Bay,  the 
Staten  Island  hills  and  the  New  Jersey  high- 
lands beyond,  of  "The  Goldfish "  of  Arthur 
Train's  story  of  that  name.  Perhaps  just 
across  the  hall  was  the  fighting  lair  of  the  multi- 
millionaire, Jim  Breed,  on  whose  appearance, 
clothes  and  deportment  Harry  Leon  Wilson's 
"Bunker  Bean"  used  to  make  caustic  steno- 
graphic comments  in  moments  of  irritation. 
But  as  it  is  very  unlikely  that  Mr.  Train  or  Mr. 
Wilson  or  any  other  of  the  novelists  of  this  part 
of  the  city  had  any  particular  buildings  in  mind, 
it  is  perhaps  wiser  to  curtail.  With  old  Trin- 
ity's spire  facing  the  western  end  of  Wall  Street, 
there  are  perhaps  bits  of  definite  description, 
such  as  the  "that  last  white  meadow  of  New 
Amsterdam,  where  the  brown  church  stands 
mothering  her  graves  at  bay,"  of  the  late  Her- 
man Knickerbocker  Viele's  The  Last  of  the 
Knickerbockers.  But  of  lower  Broadway  and 


OF  THE  NOVELISTS  35 

Wall  Street,  and  Broad  Street,  and  the  Ex- 
change of  most  of  the  novelists  of  the  last  decade 
and  a  half,  it  is  perhaps  best  to  speak  only  in 
terms  of  generality.  There  is  so  much  and  yet 
comparatively  so  little.  The  exception  to  this 
rule  is  Mr.  Edwin  Lefevre,  whose  "Lane  of  the 
Ticker "  and  its  associations  will  be  discussed  in 
the  following  chapter.  Of  such  novelists  as 
Mrs.  Wharton,  Mr.  Eobert  W.  Chambers,  David 
Graham  Phillips,  George  Barr  McCutcheon,  Bex 
Beach,  Owen  Johnson,  Samuel  Merwin,  Thomas 
Dixon,  it  is  enough  to  say  that  their  invasions  of 
"The  Street "  have  been  at  best  vague.  Else- 
where m  the  city  we  shall  find  their  trails  far 
more  definite  and  distinct. 


CHAPTER  VI 

Edwin   Lefevre's   Wall   Street— The  Woman   and   Her 
Bonds. 

WALL  STEEET,  like  other  sections  or  phases  of 
the  city,  has  had  its  specialist,  the  man  who, 
making  it  the  basis  of  fiction,  has  written  about 
the  life  from  the  inside,  in  the  person  of  Mr. 
Edwin  Lefevre,  the  author  of  Wall  Street 
Stories,  Sampson  Rock  of  Wall  Street  and  The 
Golden  Flood.  Of  the  collection  gathered  under 
the  title  of  Wall  Street  Stories,  which  Mr.  Le- 
fevre afterward  wished  that  he  had  called  Stock 
Exchange  Stories,  the  most  successful  and  far 
reaching  by  far  was  "The  Woman  and  Her 
Bonds."  The  tale  deals  with  the  efforts  of 
Fullerton  F.  Colwell,  "the  politest  man  in  Wall 
Street, "  to  aid  the  widow  of  a  business  friend. 
At  96  he  buys  for  her  account  certain  thoroughly 
reliable  bonds.  A  slight  pressure  in  the  market 
forces  the  price  down  to  93.  Despite  ColwelPs 
reassurances  Mrs.  Hunt  is  seriously  perturbed 
by  the  paper  loss,  and  in  order  to  relieve  her 

36 


NEW  YOEK  OF  THE  NOVELISTS    37 

mind  the  broker  buys  back  at  96  the  bonds  that 
he  could  have  purchased  in  the  open  market  for 
93,  thereby  pocketing  an  actual  loss  to  himself 
of  three  thousand  dollars.  But  when  the  bonds 
rise  again  Mrs.  Hunt  decides  that  she  would  like 
to  buy  them  back  at  93.  All  Colwell's  explana- 
tions are  useless.  "Are  those  not  the  same 
bonds?"  she  asks  sadly.  "Then  why  are  they 
not  my  bonds  I ' '  Through  life  the  woman  went 
clinging  to  the  conviction  that  her  husband's 
friend  had  robbed  her.  The  original  of  Fuller- 
ton  F.  Colwell  was  Elverton  E.  Chapman.  The 
Stock  Exchange  brokerage  house  of  Wilson  and 
Graves  of  the  story  was  Moore  and  Schley,  at  80 
Broadway,  in  which  Mr.  Chapman  was  a  part- 
ner. As  to  the  heroine,  Mrs.  Hunt,  the  author 
had  no  particular  woman  in  mind.  He  kept  the 
sex  before  him  and  did  his  best.  The  result  was 
that  his  sister*  told  him  when  she  read  the  story, 
that  it  was  a  shame  for  him  to  poke  fun  at  his 
own  mother.  But  his  brother-in-law,  who  is  a 
banker,  told  him  proudly  that  he  recognised  his 
own  wife.  John  S.  Phillips,  who  was  then  the 
Editor  of  McClure's  Magazine  (in  which  the  tale 
originally  appeared),  told  Lefevre  he  did  not 


n 


THE  STBEET  TEN  YEARS  AGO.      FROM  A  DRAWING  BY 
WALTEB  HALE 
38 


NEW  YORK  OF  THE  NOVELISTS    39 

know  whether  he  had  produced  a  burlesque  or  a 
masterpiece.  So  he  read  the  story  to  Mrs.  Phil- 
lips, and  when  he  had  finished  Mrs.  Phillips 
said:  "Well,  why  didn't  he  give  her  back  the 
bonds  1 ' '  Thereupon,  Phillips  added, '  *  Then  of 
course  I  knew  that  it  was  a  great  story."  Mr. 
Phillips  also  told  Mr.  Lef  evre  that  Booth  Tark- 
ington  told  him  that  he  had  read  the  story  aloud 
to  his  mother  and  sister  and  that  they  did  not 
speak  to  him  for  a  long  time  afterward,  and,  if 
any  additional  testimony  on  the  subject  is 
needed,  the  writer  of  this  book  recalls  that  he 
read  ' '  The  Woman  and  Her  Bonds ' '  to  his  own 
mother  and  sister  with  the  resulting  comment: 
"Wasn't  it  dreadful  the  way  he  robbed  that 
poor  woman." 

"The  Woman  and  Her  Bonds"  was  written  at 
a  single  sitting  before  breakfast.  Mr.  Lefevre 
had  written  half  a  dozen  Wall  Street  stories 
which  he  was  going  to  hand  into  McClure  's,  and 
it  suddenly  struck  him  that  he  had  not  done  one 
about  a  woman.  At  first  he  thought  he  would 
do  a  woman  gambler,  for  he  had  some  striking 
originals.  On  second  thought  he  decided  that  it 
was  too  disagreeable  a  type ;  and,  after  all,  not 


40    NEW  YORK  OF  THE  NOVELISTS 

really  typical.  So  he  thought  of  the  woman  in- 
vestor— Heaven  help  the  brokers!  After  the 
story  was  finished  no  end  of  stock  brokers  told 
him,  "Say,  you  got  that  story  from  seeing 

Mrs. in  my  office."    Many  of  them  swore 

that  they  had  told  him  all  about  Mrs.  Hunt. 
But  they  had  not. 


CHAPTER  VII 

Some  Men  of  the  Street— The  Lane  of  the  Ticker— The 
Golden  Flood — Sampson  Rock  of  Wall  Street — Lefevre  and 
Frank  Norris. 

ALL  the  streets  in  the  vicinity  of  the  New  York 
Stock  Exchange  have  definite  associations  with 
the  men  of  Mr.  Lefevre 's  stories.  The  office  of 
"Sam"  Sharpe,  which  plays  such  a  part  in 
"The  Break  in  Turpentine,"  based  upon  the  old 
"Whiskey  pool,"  was  on  the  fifth  floor  of  the 
Johnson  Building,  at  the  corner  of  Exchange 
Place  and  New  Street.  The  haunts  of  "the  tip- 
ster" of  the  tale  of  that  name  were  in  New 
Street,  between  Exchange  Place  and  Wall.  It 
was  there  that  the  old  "Put  and  Call"  brokers, 
or  " privilege  men,"  used  to  be.  This  type  is 
now  practically  defunct,  and  professional  tip- 
sters are  scarce.  The  hero  of  the  story  was  a 
composite  of  several  men  that  the  author  knew. 
Percy's  bucketshop  was  in  New  Street.  This 
was  the  only  bucketshop  where  they  used  to 
trade  in  as  little  as  two  shares.  The  old  build- 

41 


42  THE  NEW  YORK 

ing,  torn  down  some  years  ago,  was  on  the  east 
side  of  New  Street,  between  Exchange  Place  and 
Beaver  Street.  By  the  "Lane  of  the  Ticker " 
was  of  course  meant  Wall  Street.  ' '  At  the  head 
of  the  Street  was  old  Trinity ;  to  the  right  the 
Sub-Treasury;  to  the  left  the  Stock  Exchange. " 
The  Colonel  Josiah  T.  Treadwell  of  "A  Phil- 
anthropic Whisper"  was  former  governor  Eos- 
well  P.  Flower.  He  was  the  leader  of  the  Big 
Bull  market  in  1898  and  1899.  He  was  a  gen- 
erous, genial  man,  who  was  forever  doing  kind 
things.  His  office  was  always  full  of  men  like 
William  Rockefeller,  D.  0.  Mills,  H.  H.  Porter, 
E.  H.  Harriman,  and  Anthony  N.  Brady.  Mr. 
Lefevre  recalls  the  time  a  poor  woman  came  into 
the  office  with  some  tale  of  woe  about  her  hus- 
band, who  had  been  a  friend  of  the  governor's, 
and  had  died  leaving  nothing.  She  had  some 
jewels  which  she  thought  she  would  like  to  sell 
and  invest  the  proceeds.  The  governor  told  her 
to  sit  down,  went  into  his  office,  where  some 
multi-millionaires  were  talking  about  the  Mar- 
ket, and  held  an  auction  sale  of  the  jewellery. 
He  was  the  auctioneer,  and  he  made  his  friends 
pay  royal  prices.  The  office  of  Flower  and 


OF  THE  NOVELISTS  43 

Company  was  in  45  Broadway.  It  is  now  occu- 
pied by  the  Hamburg  American  Line.  Gov- 
ernor Flower  used  to  say,  "Stop  sitting  on  the 
shirt  tail  of  progress,  hollering  whoa!  Stop 
jumping  on  the  trusts.  Get  into  them!" 

Then  there  was  The  Golden  Flood,  which  told 
of  a  young  man  opening  a  bank  account  with  a 
deposit  of  something  over  one  hundred  thou- 
sand dollars,  increasing  it  week  by  week  until 
the  seemingly  inexhaustible  golden  flood  threat- 
ens the  financial  leaders  of  the  nation  with  de- 
struction. '  '  The  greatest  bank  in  Wall  Street, ' ' 
called  in  the  tale  the  Metropolitan  National,  is, 
of  course,  the  National  City  Bank.  The  Mar- 
shall National  is  the  Chase  Bank.  It  was  in  the 
big  room  in  the  City  Bank  that  "the  clink  of 
gold  was  aristocratically  inaudible,  the  clerks 
habitually  spoke  in  whispers."  At  the  south- 
east corner  of  Pine  and  William  Streets  was  the 
Wolff  Building,  containing  the  offices  of  Wolff, 
Herzog  and  Company,  a  firm  drawn  from  Kuhn, 
Loeb  and  Company.  Into  the  Assay  Office,  by 
the  Pine  Street  entrance,  "on  Mondays  William 
Watson  took  a  loan  of  bullion  bars,  painted 
black  to  disguise  their  nature."  The  Hein- 


44:  THE  NEW  YOEK 

sheimer  Exploration  Company  was  the  Goiggen- 
heim  Exploration  Company  at  71  Broadway. 
"Dawson  entered  the  huge  home  of  the  Inter- 
national Distributing  Syndicate. "  At  first  it 
was  called  the  Natural  Illuminant  Syndicate,  but 
this  disguise  was  too  thin,  and  the  name  was 
changed.  At  all  events  there  is  hardly  any  in- 
discretion in  identifying  the  enterprise  in  ques- 
tion as  the  Standard  Oil  Company  at  26  Broad- 
way. 

When  Wall  Street  Stories  first  appeared  read- 
ers who  were  familiar  with  the  Street  found 
amusement  in  identifying  the  characters.  Here 
is  a  list  which  was  drawn  up  at  the  time  by  a 
member  of  the  Stock  Exchange. 

Samuel  W.  Sharpe  James  R.  Keene 

Colonel  Treadwell  Roswell  P.  Flower 

John  F.  Greener  Jay  Gould 

Daniel  Dittenhoeffer  Charles  Woerishoeffer 

Silas  Shaw  Daniel  Drew. 

For  The  Golden  Flood  the  following  identifi- 
cations were  suggested: 

Richard  Dawson  James  R.  Stillman 

The  Mellons  The  Rockefellers 

Isaac  Herzog  Jacob  Schiff 

F.  W.  Harding  Frank  W.  Savin. 


OF  THE  NOVELISTS  45 

In  writing  Sampson  Rock  of  Wall  Street  Mr. 
Lefevre  had  a  composite  in  mind  for  Sampson 
Eock ;  a  combination  of  E.  H.  Harriman,  James 
R.  Keene,  and  others.  He  put  Book's  office  in 
the  Mills  Building,  at  the  corner  of  Broad  Street 
and  Exchange  Place,  because  neither  Keene  nor 
Harriman  had  theirs  there.  The  "War  Street 
News  Agency "  was  the  New  York  News  Bureau 
on  Beaver  Street. 

In  connection  with  Mr.  Lefevre 's  Wall  Street 
experiences  there  is  a  graphic  little  story  con- 
cerning him  and  the  late  Frank  Norris.  Dur- 
ing Mr.  Norris 's  last  year  in  New  York  the  two 
were  close  friends,  and  it  was  at  one  time  agreed 
between  them  that  Mr.  Lefevre  should  revise  the 
proofs  of  Mr.  Norris 's  story,  The  Pit,  in  all  the 
chapters  relating  to  the  wheat  market,  receiving 
due  credit  in  the  preface  for  his  share  of  the 
work.  As  it  turned  out,  they  never  succeeded 
in  coming  together  for  that  purpose,  and  the 
plan  was  abandoned.  But  frequently,  at  Nor- 
ris 's  request,  Mr.  Lefevre  explained  the  intrica- 
cies of  stock  markets,  speculations,  corners  and 
the  like;  and  one  night  he  found  himself 
launched  upon  an  eloquent  description  of  a 


46    NEW  YORK  OF  THE  NOVELISTS 

panic.  He  described  the  pandemonium  reigning 
on  the  floor  of  the  Exchange,  the  groups  of 
frenzied,  yelling  brokers,  the  haggard  faces  of 
men  to  whom  the  next  change  of  a  point  or  two 
meant  ruin.  And  then  he  followed  one  man  in 
particular  through  the  events  of  the  day,  and 
pictured  him  groping  his  way  blindly  out  from 
the  gallery,  a  broken,  ruined  man.  So  far,  Mr. 
Lef evre  had  told  only  what  he  had  seen,  all  too 
often,  with  his  own  eyes.  But  at  this  point,  car- 
ried away  by  his  own  story,  he  yielded  to  the 
temptation  to  fake  a  dramatic  conclusion,  and  he 
told  how  the  man  was  still  striding  restlessly, 
aimlessly  along  the  corridor,  when  the  elevator 
shot  past  and  some  one  shouted  "Down!"  and 
the  ruined  man,  his  mind  still  bent  upon  the  fall- 
ing market,  continued  his  nervous  striding,  ges- 
ticulating fiercely  and  repeating  audibly, 
"Down!  down!  down!"  "There  you  are!"  in- 
terrupted Mr.  Norris,  springing  up  excitedly. 
"There  you  are!  That  is  one  of  those  things 
that  no  novelist  could  invent!"  And  yet, 
added  Mr.  Lef  evre  in  telling  the  story,  "it  was 
the  one  bit  of  fake  in  my  whole  description." 


CHAPTEE  VIII 

Park  Row  in  Fiction — The  Old  Time  Figures — Journal- 
istic Bohemia — Jesse  Lynch  Williams — David  Graham  Phil- 
lips— Stephen  Whitman — Edward  W.  Townsend. 

PABK  Eow  in  fiction  has  had  a  twofold  signifi- 
cance and  interest.  In  the  first  place,  the  Eow 
and  the  adjacent  streets  are  hallowed  by  the  lit- 
erary and  histrionic  memories  of  the  past. 
Where  the  Park  Eow  Syndicate  Building 
stands,  was  the  old  Park  Theatre,  the  scene  of 
the  triumphs  of  Edmund  Kean,  Sinclair,  Cooke, 
Young,  Charles  Kemble,  Tyrone  Power,  Ellen 
Tree,  Fanny  Kemble,  Emma  Wheatley,  Clara 
Fisher,  Junius  Brutus  Booth,  J.  W.  Wallack, 
John  and  Charles  Mason,  Charlotte  Cushman. 
These  pavements  were  trod  by  Irving,  Poe,  Hal- 
leek,  Cozzens,  Du  Chaillu,  "  Harry  Franco, " 
Brougham,  Hoffman,  Morris ;  and  Clark  passed 
many  a  night  on  the  benches  in  the  park  oppo- 
site. Later,  it  has  belonged  to  Edmund  Clar- 
ence Stedman,  George  William  Curtis,  William 
Dean  Howells,  Eichard  Henry  Stoddard  and  to 

47 


48  THE  NEW  YOEK 

the  young  and  middle-aged  poets  and  novelists 
of  the  present  day.  In  the  second  place,  as  a 
background,  as  a  part,  a  phase,  of  the  Human 
Comedy  of  New  York  life,  it  is  beginning  to  have 
a  meaning.  True,  we  have  had,  as  yet,  nothing 
descriptive  of  the  life  comparable  to  Balzac's 
analytic  and  terrible  arraignment  of  Paris  jour- 
nalism in  Illusions  Perdues,  or  even  to  the  chap- 
ters dealing  with  the  life  of  Fleet  Street  and  the 
Fleet  Prison  in  Pendennis.  The  stories  of  Park 
Eow  life  of  former  days  did  not  go  very  far 
below  the  surface,  but  two  or  three  young  news- 
paper men  and  at  least  one  newspaper  woman 
wrote  very  cleverly  and  entertainingly  of 
" beats''  and  "sticks"  and  "copy-readers"  and 
"cub  reporters"  and  "star"  men.  Then,  too, 
there  were  the  "lady  novelists,"  to  whom  the 
Eow  was  as  useful  as  it  is  vague,  who  found  it  a 
well  of  local  colour,  although  it  might  not  have 
been  polite  to  question  them  too  closely  as  to  the 
whereabouts  of  Ann  or  Beekman  or  Spruce 
or  Franklin  Streets.  The  "journalist" — he 
was  never  a  mere  newspaper  man — of  this  sort 
of  fiction  was  forever  stalking  criminals,  scent- 
ing out  big  news,  talking  in  rather  flabby  epi- 


OF  THE  NOVELISTS  49 

gram  or  making  violent  love.  He  was  usually 
dashing  off  editorials  that  made  statesmen  sit 
up,  and  when  he  wrote  " stories,"  they  were 
never  less  than  a  column  in  length  and  were 
inevitably  found  the  next  morning  under  big 
black  headlines  at  the  beginning  of  the  first 
page.  He  lived  in  Bohemia,  a  neighbourhood  of 
which  most  city  editors,  who  are  supposed  to 
know  a  good  deal  about  everything  pertaining 
to  the  city's  streets  and  corners,  would  have 
professed  entire  ignorance.  In  short,  the  jour- 
nalist of  that  type  was  very  beautiful  and  well 
groomed,  but  it  must  be  confessed  he  was  con- 
siderably different  from  the  practical  news- 
paper man  of  real  life. 

But  into  the  fiction  of  the  last  decade  or  so 
there  has  crept  a  sturdier  and  more  realistic 
type.  The  figures  of  the  Eow  have  been  drawn 
by  men  who  have  themselves  been  newspaper 
men.  David  Graham  Phillips,  writing  of  New 
York  journalism  builded  upon  years  of  practical 
experience  and  observation.  Pitilessly  close  to 
life  was  the  career  of  Felix  Piers  of  Stephen 
Whitman's  "Predestined."  The  newspaper 
office  of  that  story  was  the  office  of  the  Evening 


50  THE  NEW  YORK 

Sun,  which  has  always  been  a  favourite  setting 
for  fiction,  even  before  Jesse  Lynch  Williams 
wrote  "The  Stolen  Story, "  a  tale  which  the  late 
Eichard  Harding  Davis,  himself  the  author  of 
"Gallegher"  and  "The  Derelict,"  generously 
characterised  as  the  best  individual  tale  of 
American  newspaper  life  yet  written.  Then 
there  was  another  story  by  Mr.  Williams  with  a 
flavour  of  distinct  local  colour. 

If,  ten  years  ago,  as  you  went  up  the  Eow,  you 
had  turned  in  at  the  dark  doorway  at  No.  29,  and 
mounted  three  pairs  of  stairs,  you  would  have 
found  the  long,  grimy  one-room  newspaper  office 
which  was  the  scene  of  Jesse  Lynch  Williams 's 
story  of  "The  City  Editor's  Conscience. " 
That  story  concerned  a  certain  Maguire.  Ma- 
guire,  who  got  the  gold  watch  and  chain,  and  of 
whom  Henderson  said  in  his  speech  that  he  was 
"about  the  squarest  city  editor  in  Park  Eow, 
even  if  he  did  flare  up  occasionally  and  get  red 
in  the  face,"  was  once  identified  as  "Jerry" 
Donnelly.  It  may  be  of  interest  to  add  that  the 
real  name  of  the  telegraph  editor  mentioned  in 
the  opening  sentence  of  the  story  was  Clark; 
that  Brown,  who  was  sent  to  the  telephone  to 


OF  THE  NOVELISTS  51 

take  from  the  Police  Headquarters  man,  Wint- 
ringer  (who  in  real  life  is  Watson  Sands),  the 
story  of  a  "bull  that  has  broken  loose  on  its 
way  to  a  slaughter-house  uptown,  and  been  ter- 
rorising people  on  Fifty-ninth  Street,  near  the 
river, "  was  Albert  M.  Chapman;  that  the  cub 
reporter  who  was  sent  out  on  the  ferry  accident 
assignment  was  John  E.  Weier.  It  was  the  old 
Commercial  Advertiser,  now  the  Globe  and  in- 
habiting other  quarters,  of  which  Mr.  Williams 
wrote  in  that  tale.  The  author  was  with  that 
paper  after  leaving  the  Sun.  But  the  Sun  was 
the  setting  that  he  usually  chose.  There  worked 
Hamilton  Knox,  the  cub  reporter,  who  found  it 
easier  to  write  his  facts  and  then  make  them 
("The  Cub  Eeporter  and  the  King  of  Spain") 
and  Eufus  Carrington,  who  beat  all  the  older 
men  from  the  other  papers  on  the  ' l  Great  Secre- 
tary of  State  Interview";  and  Townsend's 
Philip  Peyton  and  Terence  Lynn  and  T.  Fitz- 
gerald Lyon  and  that  pathetic  figure  Tommy 
Nod;  while  just  over  the  way  was  the  office  of 
the  Earth,  where  Billy  Woods  was  employed  for 
a  few  eventful  hours  after  being  discharged  by 
the  Day.  In  the  Park  opposite,  Colonel  Peter 


52    NEW  YORK  OF  THE  NOVELISTS 

Stirling's  regiment  was  quartered  during  the 
riots  described  in  Paul  Leicester  Ford's  book. 
It  was  there  that  took  place  the  bomb  explosion 
which  killed  Podds.  Over  on  the  Park  Eow 
sidewalk  Peter  Stirling  was  found  sleeping  with 
his  head  pillowed  on  a  roll  of  newspapers  by 
Leonore  and  Watts  D'Alloi. 


CHAPTER  IX 

The  Five  Points  and  Chimmie  Fadden. 

AT  the  angle  made  by  the  running  together  of 
Worth  and  Park  Streets  is,  as  any  one  with  the 
slightest  pretension  to  an  acquaintance  with 
New  York  knows,  what  remains  of  the  little  tri- 
angular park  that  marks  the  site  of  what  was 
once  the  Five  Points.  It  was  there,  about  1874, 
that  Peter  Stirling  made  friends  with  the  tene- 
ment-house children  and  took  the  first  step  to- 
ward the  achievement  of  his  career.  The  park 
lies  directly  to  the  east  of  the  Broadway  build- 
ing in  which  he  had  his  office.  "It  had  no 
right  to  be  there,  for  the  land  was  wanted  for 
business  purposes,  but  the  hollow  on  which 
it  was  built  had  been  a  swamp  in  the  old 
days,  and  the  soft  land,  and  perhaps  the  un- 
healthiness,  had  prevented  the  erection  of 
great  warehouses  and  stores,  which  almost  sur- 
rounded it.  So  it  had  been  left  to  the  storage 
of  human  souls,  instead  of  merchandise,  for  val- 
uable goods  need  careful  housing,  while  any 

03 


54  THE  NEW  YORK 

place  serves  to  pack  humanity. "    While  there 
remains  much  to  remind  us  of  the  conditions  of 


ONE  OF  THE  MOST  SINISTER  OP  ALL  THE  SINISTER  CORNEBS 
OF  THE  FIVE  POINTS  DISTRICT  OF  THE  OTHER  DAYS  WAS 
WHAT  WAS  KNOWN  AS  "MURDERERS'  ALLEY."  IT  WOUND 
ITS  WAY  THROUGH  THE  GRIMY  TENEMENTS  FROM  THE 
ENTRANCE  AT  NO.  14  BAXTER  STREET  TO  AN  OUTLET  ON 
PEARL  STREET.  "MURDERERS'  ALLEY"  WAS  USED  AND 
ELABORATELY  STAGED  BY  AUGUSTIN  DALY  IN  "PIQUE," 
IN  WHICH  PLAY  FANNY  DAVENPORT  ENACTED  THE 

HEROINE'S  PART.  THE  DRAWING  SHOWS  ALL  THAT  is 
LEFT  OF  "MURDERERS'  ALLEY"  IN  THE  EARLY  PART  OF 
SEPTEMBER,  1915. 

forty  years  ago,  the  construction  of  the  greater 
park,  only  a  stone's  throw  distant,  has  done  a 


OF  THE  NOVELISTS  55 

great  deal  toward  the  reclamation  of  the  quar- 
ter. A  few  hundred  yards  to  the  west  of  this 
little  park  could  formerly  be  found  on  Centre 
Street  the  saloon  of  Dennis  Moriarty,  Peter's 
staunch  friend  and  political  henchman. 

When  Edward  W.  Townsend  was  a  reporter 
on  the  New  York  Sun  he  was  one  day  sent  out 
on  a  "  story "  which  took  him  to  the  offices  of  a 
fossilised  company  with  a  nine-worded  name. 
Two  or  three  antiquated  clerks  sat  about  on 
high  stools,  poring  over  musty  ledgers,  and  the 
business  atmosphere  was  that  of  the  sixth  rather 
than  the  last  decade  of  the  century.  These 
offices  were  in  No.  51  Exchange  Place,  between 
Broad  and  William  Streets,  and  that  structure 
played  a  conspicuous  part  in  A  Daughter  of  the 
Tenements  under  the  name  of  the  Niantic.  It 
was  there  that  Dan  Lyon,  the  "Lord  of  Mul- 
berry Court,"  was  janitor,  that  Mark  Waters 
schemed  and  that  the  Chinaman  Chung  stole  the 
papers  that  he  afterward  concealed  in  the  sole 
of  his  shoe.  No.  51  was  on  the  north  side  of 
the  street,  next  to  the  Mills  Building.  It  was 
five  stories  in  height;  it  had  an  elevator — a 
startling  concession  to  modernity  in  the  build- 


56  THE  NEW  YOEK 

ings  that  then  lined  Exchange  Place.  At  every 
story  iron  balconies  jutted  out  over  the  sidewalk 
and  grooved  grey  columns  ran  up  along  the 
front  of  the  main  office.  There  was  a  barber 
shop  in  the  basement.  In  the  book  the  Niantic 
was  characterised  as  "one  of  the  old-fashioned 
five-story  granite  office  buildings,  where  com- 
mercial aristocracy  transacts  its  business  af- 
fairs in  the  same  manner  as  when  the  tenants 
of  the  building  lived  on  Park  Place  or  Barclay 
Street  or  thereabouts,  and  took  drives  to  the 
homes  of  that  venturesome  colony  of  other  aris- 
tocrats who  had  located  out  of  the  country  as 
far  uptown  as  Washington  Square. " 

How  many  readers  of  the  younger  generation 
are  acquainted  with  the  virtues  and  eccentrici- 
ties of  Chimmie  Fadden?  Probably  very  few. 
Yet,  for  a  time,  some  twenty  years  ago,  Mr.  Ed- 
ward W.  Townsend's  little  Bowery  boy  was  the 
most  talked  of  character  in  American  fiction. 
He  was  as  famous,  if  not  as  permanent,  as  Mr. 
Dunne's  Mister  Dooley.  In  an  age  when  rules 
of  deportment  and  expression  were,  outwardly 
at  least,  more  rigid,  debutantes  found  his 
"Wot 'ell"  convenient  and  expressive.  China- 


OF  THE  NOVELISTS  57 

mie  was  the  spirit  of  the  old  Bowery,  its  crudi- 
ties and  its  finer  impulses.  Like  Mr.  Dooley, 
he  came  into  existence  casually.  Mr.  Town- 
send,  then  with  the  New  York  Sun,  was  sent  to 
report  a  newsboy s'  dinner.  There  he  found  the 
idea  of  Chimmie,  and  the  woman,  a  slum  worker, 
who  was  the  original  of  Miss  Fannie  of  the  sto- 
ries. The  first  tale  was  written,  and  Charles  A. 
Dana  sent  out  word  calling  for  the  second. 
Soon  the  stories  began  to  be  known  and  quoted 
and  Mr.  Chester  S.  Lord,  then  the  managing 
editor  of  the  paper,  said:  "Can't  you  run  up 
and  find  the  little  Bowery  boy  you've  been  writ- 
ing about  and  get  him  to  talk  some  more?" 
"Oh,"  said  Mr.  Townsend,  "he's  purely  an 
imaginary  character."  "Then  imagine  some 
more  about  him. "  There  came  a  time  when  the 
author  applied  to  Mr.  Dana  for  the  privilege  of 
bringing  out  the  stories  in  book  form.  In  giv- 
ing the  required  consent  the  editor  added  ex- 
travagantly: "And  I  hope  you  sell  ten  thou- 
sand of  them."  A  few  months  later  a  dinner 
was  given  to  Mr.  Townsend  in  celebration  of  the 
hundred  thousandth  copy  of  Chimmie  Fadden 
sold.  The  next  morning  Mr.  Dana  went  to  Mr. 


58    NEW  YOEK  OF  THE  NOVELISTS 

Townsend's  desk  in  the  Sun  office,  and  after  re- 
ferring to  the  dinner,  said:  "Can  you  tell  me 
why  Chimmie  Fadden  has  reached  a  hundred 
thousand  f"  "  Because, "  replied  Mr.  Town- 
send,  "of  the  sentimental  relations  of  Chimmie 
Fadden  and  Mr.  Paul  toward  Miss  Fannie. M 


PAET  II 

THE  MYSTEBIOUS  EAST  SIDE 


CHAPTEE  I 

The  Trail  of  Potash  and  Perlmutter— Wasserbauer's  Cafe 
—Henry  D.  Feldman— The  Lispenard  Street  Loft. 

THOSE  who  saw  the  play  made  from  the  Potash 
and  Perlmutter  stories  took  away  some  false  im- 
pressions of  certain  of  the  characters  and  also 
of  the  definite  background.  For  example,  stage 
exigencies  made  something  of  a  rascal  of  the 
lawyer,  Henry  D.  Feldman.  As  a  matter  of 
fact  the  original  Henry  D.  Feldman  was  a  thor- 
oughly respectable  and  reliable  member  of  the 
New  York  bar,  who  practised  in  offices  at  51 
Chambers  Street,  opposite  the  County  Court 
House.  The  first  business  establishment  of  the 
firm  of  Potash  and  Perlmutter  was  placed  in 
East  Broadway.  In  reality  it  was  in  Lispenard 
Street.  There,  in  a  loft  in  a  rickety  old  brown 
building  bearing  the  number  19,  Potash  and 
Perlmutter  first  came  upon  the  scene  of  fiction. 
Afterward,  in  both  stories  and  play,  the  busi- 
ness, feeling  the  spirit  of  progress,  moved  up  to 
Fifth  Avenue  and  Twentieth  Street,  the  very 

61 


62  THE  NEW  YORK 

centre  of  the  new  clothing  district.  Just  round 
the  corner,  at  11  West  Nineteenth  Street,  was 
the  business  of  Max  Koblin,  the  "Cravenette 
King."  The  Prince  Clarence  Hotel  was,  of 
course,  the  Prince  George.  In  the  play  the 
home  of  Potash  was  placed  in  Lexington  Ave- 
nue. Potash  really  lived  in  an  apartment  over 
a  drug  store  at  the  corner  of  Lenox  Avenue 
and  One  Hundred  and  Eighteenth  Street.  The 
Harlem  Winter  Garden,  where  "Abe"  enter- 
tained his  family,  and,  on  occasion,  an  out-of- 
town  customer,  was  drawn  from  Pabst's,  on 
One  Hundred  and  Twenty-fifth  Street,  between 
Seventh  and  Eighth  Avenues. 

Probably  no  place  mentioned  in  the  stories 
has  left  a  more  definite  impression  on  the  minds 
of  readers  than  Wasserbauer's  Cafe.  Over  the 
tables  there  were  enacted  the  tragedies  and 
comedies  of  business.  There  frugal  self-denial 
was  practised  and  extravagant  gluttony  given 
free  rein.  Wasserbauer's  was  a  composite  of 
many  restaurants  and  hosts.  Far  back,  the 
original  of  Wasserbauer's  was  Glogau's,  in 
Canal  Street,  where  eating  was  incidental  and 
business  was  the  reigning  sport.  Then  there 


OF  THE  NOVELISTS  63 

was  a  restaurant  kept  by  a  man  named  Wasser, 
who  very  closely  resembled  the  Wasserbauer  of 
the  tales.  Years  ago  he  forsook  the  business 
district  for  more  aristocratic  fields,  and  an  up- 
town Wasser 's  came  into  existence.  But  most 
closely  approximating  Wasserbauer 's  was  Fe- 
lix's, in  Greene  Street. 

In  Canal  Street,  well  over  to  the  East  Eiver, 
was  the  tailor  shop  which  plays  a  part  in  the 
story  ' '  Opportunity. ' '  The  region  is  a  study  in 
colour  and  laughable  contradictions.  The  Yid- 
dish tailors  have  an  abundance  of  signs  de- 
signed to  exploit  their  wares,  but  owing  to  their 
limited  knowledge  of  English,  hang  any  sign  on 
any  suit,  with  rather  astonishing  results.  Near 
by  was  New  Eiga  Hall,  the  scene  of  the  social 
activities  described  in  "B.  S.  Y.  P." 


CHAPTER  H 

The  Origin  of  the  Tales— The  Vernacular  of  the  Cloak 
and  Suit  Business — Selling  by  the  Gross. 

BY  reason  of  the  extraordinary  success  of  the 
stories,  and  the  additional  extraordinary  suc- 
cess of  the  play  subsequently  based  upon  them, 
there  is  no  more  vital  trail  in  recent  fiction  deal- 
ing with  the  city  than  that  of  Mr.  Montague 
Glass's  "Abe"  Potash  and  "Mawruss"  Perl- 
mutter.  A  year  or  two  ago  Mr.  Glass  told  of 
the  origin  of  these  tales.  The  first  three  that 
he  wrote  introducing  the  characters  went  the 
rounds  of  the  magazines  and  were  found  much 
too  radical  for  acceptance  by  the  editors. 
Eventually  the  author  disposed  of  two  of  them 
to  a  magazine  proprietor  in  Detroit.  The  pro- 
prietor promptly  failed.  The  magazine,  how- 
ever, continued  under  new  management,  and  a 
compromise  was  reached  by  which  Mr.  Glass 
sold  the  stories  to  the  new  owner  at  an  absurdly 
low  figure.  The  third  story  appeared  in  the 
Scrap  Book,  and  the  fourth  in  Munsey's.  Then 

64 


NEW  YOEK  OF  THE  NOVELISTS    65 

came  "Taking  It  Easy"  in  the  Saturday  Eve- 
ning Post,  followed  by  "The  Arverne  Sacque." 
"With  that,"  commented  Mr.  Glass,  "the  sea- 
son opened." 

Henry  D.  Feldman  had  a  definite  original,  but 
Potash  and  Perlmutter  were  composite  charac- 
ters. Feldman 's  habit  of  quoting  law  Latin  for 
the  benefit  of  his  clients  is  a  trick  of  many  prac- 
titioners of  New  York  City,  and  as  for  his  re- 
puted infallibility,  there  are  few  business  men 
who  have  not  exalted  ideas  of  the  powers  of 
some  particular  lawyer.  Of  course,  the  adven- 
tures of  Potash  and  Perlmutter  were  pure  in- 
vention, but  their  speech,  thought,  and  action 
were  drawn  from  life.  For  ten  years  Mr.  Glass 
was  present  almost  daily  at  bankruptcy  meet- 
ings, closing  of  titles  to  real  estate,  and  confer- 
ences with  reference  to  the  entrance  into  or  dis- 
solution of  co-partnerships.  At  these  times  he 
had  the  opportunity  of  seeing  many  Potashes 
and  Perlmutters  stripped  to  the  skin,  for  there 
is  nothing  which  more  effectually  peels  off  a 
man's  jacket  of  politeness  than  a  good  old-fash- 
ioned row  over  a  real  estate  or  co-partnership 
difficulty. 


66  THE  NEW  YOEK 

The  fruits  of  this  experience  are  the  Potash 
and  Perlnmtter  stories,  which,  by  the  way,  are 
not  dialect  stories  in  the  editorial  sense.  The 
latter  class  of  stories  comprises  the  narratives  in 
which  "Hoot  mon"  and  "Ah'm  gwuine,  Suh," 
are  sprinkled  as  liberally  as  caraway  seeds  in 
rye  bread ;  but  it  will  be  noticed  that,  with  few 
exceptions,  when  Abe  and  Morris  speak,  they 
utter  words  which  conform  strictly  to  the  spell- 
ing in  Webster's  Unabridged,  the  Standard  or 
the  Century  Dictionary.  .,("1  hold,"  said  Mr. 
Glass,  "no  brief  for  any  of  these  publications. ") 
The  reason  for  this  is  that  the  speech  of  "Pot- 
ash and  Perlmutter"  differs  so  subtly  from  the 
vernacular  of  the  ignorant  New  Yorker  as  to 
evade  a  phonetic  spelling,  more  especially  as  it 
is  not  mispronunciation  of  words  but  their  in- 
version of  sentences  which  stamps  "  Abe's''  and 
"Morris's"  dialect  as  foreign.  They  contin- 
ually utter  such  introductory  phrases  as  "Take 
it  from  me,  Mawruss,"  or  "Look-y  here,  Abe,  I 
want  you  to  tell  me  something,"  and  there  are 
one  hundred  and  one  different  mannerisms  in 
their  conversation  which  can  be  faithfully  re- 
produced without  misspelling  a  single  word. 


OF  THE  NOVELISTS  67 

Mr.  Glass  took  up  an  inquiry  that  has  been 
made  often.  "Was  I  ever  in  the  cloak  and  suit 
business  ?  I  will  not  deny  it  further  than  to  say 
that  I  have  never  been  in  any  business  but  the 
law  business,  which  in  New  York  City  is  the 
trouble  department  of  every  other  business  in 
the  directory  from  '  architectural  iron  work' 
down  to  *  yarns,  cotton  and  woollen.'  I  was  as- 
sociated with  a  firm  whose  practice  was  largely 
of  the  kind  called  'commercial'  and  many  of 
their  clients  were  engaged  in  the  women's  outer 
garment  business.  From  this  source  I  derived 
some  knowledge  of  the  cloak  and  suit  business, 
but  not  enough  to  prevent  me  from  getting  into 
technical  difficulties.  No  doubt  you  read  in  the 
early  'Potash  and  Perlmutter'  stories  that  Abe 
and  Morris  received  many  orders  for  garments 
in  gross  lots.  After  the  third  story  they  ceased 
to  do  business  on  quite  so  wholesale  a  scale,  and 
this  sudden  falling  off  in  trade  was  due  to  about 
a  hundred  letters  I  received  from  readers 
throughout  the  United  States.  They  all  wrote 
me  that  they  enjoyed  the  stories  very  much,  but 
cloaks  were  not  sold  by  the  gross.  Cloak  and 
suit  acquaintances  accosted  me  on  the  street  to 


68    NEW  YOEK  OF  THE  NOVELISTS 

tell  me  that  cloaks  were  not  sold  by  the  gross. 
I  was  called  on  the  telephone  at  home  and  in  my 
office  and  asked  by  strange  and  familiar  voices 
if  I  knew  that  cloaks  were  not  sold  by  the  gross. 
I  saw  that  any  attempt  I  might  make  to  change 
the  long-established  custom  of  a  trade  would  be 
hopeless,  so  Potash  and  Perlmutter  now  sell 
cloaks  and  suits  by  the  single  garment. " 


CHAPTEE  III 

Police  Headquarters  and  Criminal  Court — The  Firm  of 
Shaw  and  Shimmel — Arthur  Train's  Artemas  Quibble — 
Pontin's  Restaurant. 

WHAT  Scotland  Yard  is  to  the  English  novelist 
who  allows  his  imagination  to  play  about  Lon- 
don crime,  what  the  Eue  Jerusalem  is  to  the 
French  novelist,  No.  300  Mulberry  Street  is  to 
the  novelist  of  New  York  life.  In  former 
years  it  was  almost  exclusively  "300  Mulberry 
Street."  Now  it  is  as  much  interpreted  by  its 
telephonic  symbol.  A  young  District  Attorney 
in  a  recent  story  by  Eichard  Harding  Davis  was 
inveigled  to  a  road  house  on  the  old  Boston  Post 
Eoad,  and  there  confronted  with  a  trumped-up 
situation  designed  to  lead  to  his  political  un- 
doing. Tempted  to  hush  up  the  pretended 
scandal  involving  his  sister  and  brother-in-law, 
his  reply  came  when  he  took  up  the  telephone 
and  said:  "Central,  give  me  Spring  3100." 
For  to  ask  for  Spring  3100  is  equivalent  to 
Sherlock  Holmes  calling  for  direct  communica- 

69 


70 


THE  NEW  YOEK 


tion  with  Scotland  Yard.  The  number  signifies 
the  vast,  complex  underworld  of  New  York  life ; 
the  struggle  between  the  powers  that  rule  and 
the  powers  that  prey.  From  300  Mulberry 


THE  NEWGATE  OF  NEW  YOEK 


Street  the  logical  sequence  is  to  Centre  Street, 
first  to  the  Criminal  Court  Building  and  then  to 
the  Tombs  Prison.  All  about  the  Criminal 
Court  are  the  offices  of  the  shyster,  black-mail- 
ing lawyers  of  New  York  fiction.  Here,  on  one 


OF  THE  NOVELISTS  71 

corner  are  the  rooms  where  Bansemer  of 
George  Barr  McCutcheon's  Jane  Cable  spun 
his  web.  In  bygone  years  there  was  a  dingy, 
red  brick  building  in  the  shadow  of  the  Criminal 
Court  which  flaunted  the  sign  of  a  notorious 
firm  that  has  since  been  dissolved.  That  firm 
and  that  dingy  structure  are  continually  serving 
as  models.  Back  in  the  days  of  Mrs.  Peixada, 
the  late  Henry  Harland,  writing  under  the 
pseudonym  of  "Sidney  Luska,"  introduced  the 
firm  as  that  of  Shaw  and  Shimmel.  David 
Graham  Phillips  in  The  Fortune  Hunter  called 
it  "Loeb,  Lynn,  Levy,  and  McCafferty."  It 
was  there  that  the  shady  Feuerstein  resorted 
with  the  hopes  of  buying  immunity  from  just 
punishment  and  was  naturally  bled.  But  per- 
haps in  no  book  has  that  representative  firm  and 
the  life  of  chicanery  and  legal  corruption  for 
which  it  stood  been  more  vigorously  indicted 
than  in  Arthur  Train's  The  Confessions  of 
Artemas  Quibble.  There  is  set  forth  "the  in- 
genuous and  unvarnished  history  of  Artemas 
Quibble,  Esq.,  one  time  practitioner  in  the  New 
York  Criminal  Courts,  together  with  an  account 
of  the  divers  wiles,  tricks,  sophistries,  techni- 


72  THE  NEW  YOBK 

calities,  and  sundry  artifices  of  himself  and 
others  of  the  Fraternity,  commonly  yclept 
'shysters'  or  '  shyster  lawyers.'  "  Quibble, 
ejected  from  his  desk  with  the  dignified  legal 
firm  of  Haight  and  Foster,  at  No.  10  Wall 
Street,  contracts  a  partnership  with  Gottlieb, 
and  for  nearly  a  generation  makes  a  fat  living 
by  blackmail,  bribery,  and  perjury ;  by  ruining 
homes  and  reputations ;  and  by  directing  the  op- 
erations of  organised  bands  of  criminals.  They 
become  the  Fagins  of  the  City  of  New  York. 
Once  the  poor  and  defenceless  fall  into  their 
power,  they  extort  tribute  from  them  and  turn 
them  into  the  paths  of  crime.  But  growing 
bolder  with  each  year  of  success  they  make  the 
one  false  step  that  brings  them  within  reach  of 
the  arms  of  the  law  and  with  the  sentence  to  ten 
years  in  States  Prison  at  hard  labour  the  firm 
of  Gottlieb  and  Quibble  comes  to  an  end. 

Artemas  Quibble  and  Abraham  Gottlieb,  like 
many  of  the  habitues  of  the  Criminal  Court 
Building,  were  in  the  habit  of  taking  their  mid- 
day meal  at  Pontin's.  That  restaurant  is  in 
Franklin  Street.  Now  it  is  on  the  south  side 
of  the  street.  But  for  forty-four  years,  and 


OF  THE  NOVELISTS  73 

until  1912,  it  was  on  the  north  side,  almost  ex- 
actly opposite  its  present  situation.  For  nearly 
half  a  century  there  has  hardly  been  a  single 
great  case  tried  in  the  New  York  Criminal 
Court  in  which  the  lawyers  for  the  prosecution 
and  for  the  defence  did  not  lunch  at  Pontin's 
and  over  the  tables  discuss  the  points  brought 
out  at  the  morning  session.  A  portrait  of  the 
original  from  which  Arthur  Train  drew  Gott- 
lieb, whose  checkered  career  as  a  New  York  law- 
yer came  to  an  end  a  few  years  ago,  hangs  on 
the  wall  to  one  side  of  the  little  stairway  leading 
from  the  street  to  the  second  floor. 


CHAPTEE  IV 

"Case's"  and  "The  Big  Barracks"— Scenes  of  Stories  by 
R.  H.  Davis  and  Julian  Ralph. 

ON  the  south  side  of  Hester  Street,  about  fifty 
yards  west  of  the  Bowery,  was  Case's  Tenement, 
where  the  disreputable  Mr.  Eaegan  lay  in  hid- 
ing after  his  fatal  fight  with  Pike  McGonegal  at 
the  end  of  Wakeman's  Dock  on  the  East  River 
front,  and  which  is  spoken  of  in  many  of  Rich- 
ard Harding  Davis 's  earlier  stories.  It  was  a 
very  dirty  and  dilapidated  structure — broken 
panes  of  glass,  twisted  railings,  glaring  discol- 
ourations.  There  was  a  Chinese  laundry  on  the 
main  floor.  Twenty  odd  years  ago  Mr.  Davis, 
who  was  then  a  reporter  on  the  Evening  Sun, 
was  one  day  sent  up  to  this  place  to  " cover" 
the  story  of  a  greengoods  game  that  was  sup- 
posed to  be  running  there  under  the  supervision 
of  a  man  named  Perceval.  Mr.  Perceval  was 
found,  but  refused  to  believe  in  the  sincerity  of 
his  visitor  as  a  "come-on,"  and  the  interview 
ended  by  Mr.  Davis  beating  a  very  hasty  and 
undignified  retreat.  Later,  the  author  of  Van 

74 


NEW  YOEK  OF  THE  NOVELISTS    75 

Bibber  met  the  messenger  boy,  who  acted  as 
trailer  for  the  greengoods  man,  and  offered  him 
ten  dollars  for  information  as  to  the  exact  na- 
ture of  his  employer's  business,  the  boy  proving 
incorruptible.  The  incident  was  elaborated  in 
the  story  of  "The  Trailer  of  Room  No.  8." 

The  Big  Barracks  Tenement,  the  scene  of  the 
majority  of  the  stories  in  Julian  Ralph's  People 
We  Pass,  was  a  great  yellow  brick  structure  on 
the  west  side  of  Forsythe  Street,  near  the  north- 
ern end.  The  Big  Barracks  was  the  home  of 
Dr.  Whitfield  and  his  daughter,  Mrs.  Ericson, 
"Petey"  and  Nora  Burke,  and  the  scene  of 
"The  Lineman's  Wedding,"  arranged  and  re- 
ported by  Mr.  "Barny"  Kelley  of  the  Daily 
Camera.  Allusion  is  also  due  to  the  stories  of 
"Love  in  the  Big  Barracks,"  probably  the  tru- 
est and  strongest  tale  of  all  in  People  We  Pass, 
and  "The  Mother  Song,"  with  its  touching 
pathos  and  quaint  humour.  Speaking  of  these 
stories,  Mr.  Ealph  once  said:  "In  truth,  like 
so  many  other  things  of  the  kind,  my  stories 
grew  out  of  many  pieces.  First  I  adopted  the 
name  of  the  house  because  of  the  brutal  and 
insulting  name,  'The  Big  Flat'  I  saw  on  a  dou- 


76    NEW  YORK  OF  THE  NOVELISTS 

ble-decker  tenement  in  lower  Mott  or  Baxter 
Street.  Next  I  described  the  house  with  which 
I  was  familiar — or  a  type  of  tenement  found 
elsewhere.  Finally  I  chose  Forsythe  Street,  be- 
cause I  knew  more  tenement  folks  there  than 
elsewhere,  knew  them  better,  and  thought  that 
the  mixture  of  races  and  worldly  conditions  of- 
fered as  much  scope  for  stories  as  I  could  get 
from  any  other  quarter.  Innumerable  as  were 
the  kinds  and  points  at  which  I  touched  these 
tenement  people  in  my  reporting  experience,  it 
was  only  here  that  I  was  received  in  their  clubs 
or  societies,  at  their  dances  and  on  their  picnics, 
on  a  basis  of  complete  friendliness  and  frank- 
ness. In  other  words,  I  looked  on  in  other  tene- 
ment districts,  but  in  this  one  7  took  part.  And 
here  I  found  at  least  one  lay  employer  of  skilled 
labour  living  in  old-world  fraternity  with  his 
employes  and  their  families,  as  well  as  an  un- 
usual number  of  well-to-do  and  more  than  ordi- 
narily respectable  tavern-  and  shop-keepers. 
It's  all  a  thing  of  the  past.  A  very  few  years 
ago  I  went  back  and  tried  to  resurrect  the  old 
conditions,  but  they  were  buried  and  their  spirit 
Jiad  moved  uptown." 


CHAPTER  V 

The  Search  for  the  Mysterious  East  Side — The  London 
of  Dickens  and  the  Paris  of  Sue  and  Balzac. 

As  a  respectable,  rent-paying,  pew-holding,  in- 
come-tax-resenting inmate  of  the  city  directory, 
the  novelist  is  bound  to  give  his  endorsement 
and  support  to  every  movement  for  the  obliter- 
ation of  the  slum,  and  the  amelioration  of  the 
condition  of  the  people  who  dwell  therein.  As 
the  creator  of  fiction  of  a  certain  kind  he  is  per- 
mitted to  think  of  the  passing  of  the  dim  alley 
and  the  rear  tenement  with  a  little  twinge  of  re- 
gret. When  the  last  bit  of  the  East  Side  that 
was  once  mysterious  is  gone,  when  settlement 
workers,  sociological  cranks,  impertinent  re- 
formers, self-advertising  politicians,  and  bil- 
lionaire Socialists  have  thoroughly  done  their 
work,  where  will  the  novelist,  engaged  upon  a 
book  of  New  York  life  in  which  there  is  to  be 
plenty  of  action,  and  the  high  lights  and  low 
lights  of  social  contrast,  turn  for  his  Thieves' 
Court,  his  Gunmen's  Kitchen?  There  is  an  epic 

77 


78  THE  NEW  YORK 

swing  to  the  account  of  the  first  journey  through 
London  made  by  Oliver  Twist  at  the  heels  of 
the  Artful  Dodger — "From  the  Angel  into  St. 
John's  Road;  down  the  small  street  which  ter- 
minates at  Sadler's  Wells  Theatre;  through  Ex- 
mouth  Street,  and  Coppice  Row ;  down  the  little 
court  by  the  side  of  the  workhouse :  across  the 
classic  ground  which  once  bore  the  name  of 
Hockley-in-the-Hole ;  thence  into  Little  Saffron 
Hill:  and  so  into  Saffron  Hill  the  Great " — and 
the  den  of  Fagin.  The  very  names  are  sinister. 
Years  ago  the  creation  of  a  great  viaduct  swept 
away  the  labyrinth  of  foul  alleys,  but  with  the 
wise  improvement  went  a  corner  of  romance. 
What  reader  can  ever  forget  the  Cite  as  Eugene 
Sue  pictured  it  in  the  opening  chapters  of  The 
Mysteries  of  Paris — the  cluster  of  narrow, 
winding,  ill-paved,  dimly  lighted  streets  back  of 
the  Cathedral  of  Notre  Dame,  the  den  of  the 
"Ogress,"  and  the  men  and  women  who  an- 
swered to  such  names  as  "The  Slasher,"  "The 
School  Master, ' '  and  "  Fleur  de  Marie ' '  t  That 
is  gone,  too,  as  almost  all  of  Balzac's  city  of  the 
shadows  is  gone.  And  there  was  once  a  New 
York  in  which  the  novelist  could  allow  his  in- 


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OF  THE  NOVELISTS  79 

vention  free  play.  Perhaps,  like  the  vanished 
Bohemia,  this  vanished  proletaire  never  really 
existed  save  in  imagination.  But  it  was  a  place 
where,  if  you  were  wralking  through  one  of  the 
side  streets  and  looked  up,  you  were  sure  to  see 
a  wild,  frightened,  never-to-be-forgotten  face 
outlined  against  the  window.  Letters  calling 
for  assistance  or  apprising  you  that  some  stu- 
pendous crime  was  maturing  were  constantly 
fluttering  down  to  the  pavement  at  your  feet. 
The  rivers,  especially  by  night,  were  places  to 
inspire  pleasurable  thrills  of  terror.  The  land 
and  the  structures  along  the  water  front  were 
thought  to  be  honeycombed  with  caves  and  se- 
cret passages.  Before  the  imagination  the  en- 
tire lower  East  Side  loomed  up  as  a  vast  mys- 
terious region  where  crime  stalked  brazen  when 
night  came  down  upon  the  city.  The  very  name, 
the  Five  Points,  carried  with  it  an  impression 
of  gloom.  As  a  child  the  present  writer  recalls 
the  perturbation  with  which  the  mention  of 
Chatham  Square,  a  place  that  he  had  never  seen, 
filled  him. 


CHAPTER  VI 

Tales  of  Mean  Streets— Batavia  Street— The  Jolly  Al- 
banians— Washington's  Cherry  Street  Home — Doyer  Street 
—Allen  Street. 

MUCH  of  the  old  East  Side  is  gone,  more  of  it 
has  changed  or  is  in  the  changing.  But  some 
remains,  enough  to  serve  the  purposes  of  the 
novelists  of  the  shadows,  provided  he  be  suf- 
ficiently diligent  in  his  search.  For  example, 
take  a  very  recent  novel,  Mr.  Eupert  Hughes 's 
Empty  Pockets,  a  tale  of  the  good  old  melo- 
dramatic sort.  In  it  Mr.  Hughes  has  laid  very 
definite  claim  to  a  section  of  the  East  Side  that 
lies  in  the  shadow  of  the  Brooklyn  Bridge,  a  cor- 
ner of  the  city  that  had  hitherto  escaped  the 
novelist's  attention.  As  a  specific  background 
for  certain  episodes  he  wanted  the  ideal  street ; 
he  sought  it  in  the  course  of  many  taxicab  rides ; 
he  found  it  in  Batavia  Street.  "I  wanted  some- 
thing with  the  flavour  of  Dickens 's  London, " 
Mr.  Hughes  told  the  writer,  "and  Batavia 
Street  is  the  most  Dickensy  street  in  New 

80 


NEW  YORK  OF  THE  NOVELISTS    81 

York."  As  it  impressed  the  novelist  it  im- 
pressed its  characters.  Muriel  Schuyler,  the 
heroine  of  the  tale,  saw  it  as  "  a  narrow  alley, 
a  few  hundred  feet  long."  It  reminded  her  of 
London,  with  its  air  of  being  mislaid,  its  brevity, 
and  its  gloomy  antiquity.  "It  is  the  region 
where  an  arch  of  the  first  of  the  big  city  bridges 
soars  above  the  roofs,  and  where  the  white 
height  of  the  Municipal  Building  thrusts  its  icy 
pinnacles  up  and  up  into  the  sky."  "In  Ba- 
tavia  Street  the  tenements  are  not  very  high  and 
have  little  wooden  steps  set  sidewise."  This 
curious  little  thoroughfare,  just  as  Mr.  Hughes 
has  described  it,  can  be  easily  found  and  studied 
at  leisure  by  any  one  willing  to  take  the  two 
short  blocks  walk  from  Roosevelt  Street  to 
James  Street.  It  is  the  typical  changing  neigh- 
bourhood in  which,  years  ago,  the  American 
gave  away  to  the  Irish,  and  then,  in  turn,  the 
Irish  to  the  Jew,  the  Jew  to  the  Italian,  and 
now  the  Italian  is  giving  before  the  Greek. 
Nearby,  within  a  stone's  throw,  in  Cherry 
Street,  long,  long  years  ago  was  the  first  New 
York  home  of  the  first  president  of  the  United 
States.  Nearby,  to-day,  in  Cherry  Street,  is  the 


82  THE  NEW  YOEK 

cafe  of  the  Jolly  Albanians,  a  scene  of  Empty 
Pockets,  and  a  resort  patronised  by  "Kill 
Papa,"  which  was  the  abbreviation  of  the  lei- 
surely Brooklyn  Bridge  of  a  name,  Achilles 
Papademetrakopoulos.  You  have  but  to  cross 
the  street  from  the  Jolly  Albanians  to  find  the 
sinister  back  alley  which  plays  a  part  in  the 
story.  In  the  picture  of  this  Greek  quarter  Mr. 
Hughes  believes  that  he  has  found  a  new  phase 
of  New  York  slum  life.  But  the  East  Side  of 
Empty  Pockets  ranges  beyond  the  Greek  Quar- 
ter, winding  its  way  through  the  entire  lower 
East  Side.  On  the  roof  of  a  tenement  in  Or- 
chard Street  Merithew  is  found  murdered. 
There  are  descriptions  of  the  clamorous  New 
Bowery,  the  packed  Division  Street,  and  Allen 
"a  very  tunnel  of  a  street."  "If  Batavia  is 
the  most  Dickensy  of  New  York  streets,"  said 
Mr.  Hughes, i  i  Allen  is  the  most  horrible.  There 
is  a  blacksmith  shop  now  in  the  street  which  is 
the  best  setting  in  the  city  for  a  really  pictur- 
esque assassination." 

Mr.  Hughes  alluded  to  the  first  home  of  the 
first  president  of  the  United  States.  As  it  was 
in  the  last  years  of  the  eighteenth  century  that 


OF  THE  NOVELISTS  83 

home  is  pictured  in  Gertrude  Atherton's  The 
Conqueror,  a  book  which,  incidentally,  seems  to 
be  one  of  the  most  vital  of  all  the  novels  that 
have  been  published  in  the  last  ten  or  fifteen 
years.  In  Mrs.  Atherton's  book  we  were  told 
that  Washington  was  occupying  temporarily  the 
house  of  Walter  Franklin,  on  the  corner  of 
Cherry  Street  and  Franklin  Square,  a  country 
residence  at  which  society  grumbled,  for  all  the 
world  lived  between  the  present  site  of  the  City 
Hall  and  Battery  Park.  Hamilton  rode  up  on 
horseback,  and  was  shown  into  the  library, 
which  overlooked  the  present  garden.  But 
after  a  few  months  in  this  residence  Washing- 
ton moved  to  the  McComb  house  in  lower  Broad- 
way, one  of  the  largest  in  town,  with  a  recep- 
tion room  of  superb  dimensions.  Here  Mrs. 
Washington,  standing  on  a  dais,  usually  assisted 
by  Mrs.  Adams  and  Mrs.  Hamilton,  received, 
with  the  rigid  formality  of  foreign  courts,  all 
who  dared  to  attend  her  levees.  These,  accord- 
ing to  Mrs.  Atherton,  were  exceedingly  frigid. 
The  President  was  very  fond  of  the  theatre,  and 
invited  a  party  once  a  week  to  accompany  him 
to  John  Street. 


84  THE  NEW  YOEK 

All  about  this  section  were  laid  scenes  of 
Cleveland  Moffett's  A  King  in  Rags.  Doyer 
Street  with  evil  looking  Chinamen  skulking 
under  dark  doorways,  the  smell  of  burning 
opium:  the  harsh  tom-tom  in  the  Chinese  thea- 
tre, and  from  the  Doyer  Street  mission  just  be- 
yond the  fragment  of  a  Gospel  hymn. 

"Oh,  Depths  of  Mercy!     Can  it  be 
That  gate  was  left  ajar  for  me!" 

Chatham  Square  and  Catharine  Street  at 
half -past  six  in  the  evening,  when  the  vast  tene- 
ment region  of  the  East  Side  was  drawing  back 
into  its  sordid  streets  and  hallways  the  great 
toiling  army.  The  sinister  asylums  on  the 
Bowery  where  bunks  are  offered  to  human 
wrecks  at  twenty  or  fifteen  cents  a  night  or  less. 
A  character  in  the  book  says : 

"  'I'll  tell  you  how  one  man  escaped  by  saving,'  he 
pointed  down  Orchard  Street,  'he  lived  in  that  second 
house,  he  was  a  poor  capmaker,  and  he  shot  himself 
because  he  was  out  of  work,  and  couldn't  bear  to  see 
his  wife  and  little  children  suffer.  He  knew  they 
would  get  the  insurance  money  anyway.  That's  how 
he  saved.  And  two  years  ago,  over  there  on  Eldridge 
Street,'  he  pointed  again,  'I  found  a  family  of  poor 
Jews  living  in  a  dark  corner  of  the  hallway,  under 


OF  THE  NOVELISTS  85 

the  stairs.  There  was  no  window,  no  door,  it  wasn't 
a  room  at  all,  only  a  narrow,  slanting  space  roughly 
boarded  off,  and  the  landlord  made  them  pay  eight 
dollars  a  month  for  it.  There  the  mother  had  a  baby. 
That's  how  they  saved.  And  back  in  Allen  Street 
you  can  find  whole  families  to-day  living  in  a  single 
room,  dark  and  damp,  and  swarming  with  vermin, 
and  sleeping  five  or  six  in  a  bed.  That's  how  they 


And  again,  speaking  of  this  region  fifty  years 
ago: 


"  ' 


And  there  were  slaughter-houses  everywhere, 
and  fat-boilers,  and  such  vile  tenements  that— 
They're  all  gone  now,  "Bone  Alley,"  and  "  Kerosene 
Row,"  and  the  "Big  Flat"  in  Mott  Street,  and  "Ban- 
dits' Roost,"  but  I  tell  you  it  was  worth  a  man's  life 
to  go  past  them  at  night.  Now  you  can  go  any- 
where.' " 


CHAPTER  VII 

Tales  of  Mean  Streets— Orchard  Street— The  Bowery— 
The  Straw  Cellar— McTurk's— Monkey  Hill. 

To  turn  to  the  trails  of  other  writers  in  Orchard 
Street,  near  the  tenement  that  saw  the  mur- 
der of  Merithew,  George  Barr  McCutcheon, 
in  The  Rose  in  the  Bing,  placed  the  basement 
joint  where  gathered  the  yeggmen  to  await  the 
execution  of  Dick  Cronk  for  the  murder  of 
Colonel  Grand.  In  this  group  was  the  hunch- 
back brother  of  the  condemned  man,  Ernie 
Cronk,  the  real  murderer.  Any  street  in  the 
neighbourhood  will  do  as  the  background  for 
Josephine  Daskam  Bacon's  Ardelia  walking 
derisively  behind  the  policeman  after  her  brief 
visit  to  Arcady.  About  here  are  the  scenes  of 
John  A.  Moroso's  The  Quarry.  Down  on  the 
East  Eiver  water  front  is  the  shooting  gallery 
that  figures  in  Arthur  Stringer's  The  Hand  of 
Peril,  while  from  the  Central  office  at  300  Mul- 
berry Street,  Blake,  the  Second  Deputy,  started 
on  the  pursuit  of  Connie  Binhart  that  was  to 

86 


NEW  YOKK  OF  THE  NOVELISTS     87 

take  him  twice  round  the  world  as  narrated  in 
the  same  author's  The  Shadow.  Over  toward 
the  Bowery  there  was  a  dance  hall  which  Booth 
Tarkington  in  his  undergraduate  days  discov- 
ered in  the  course  of  certain  sociological  investi- 
gations. Under  the  name  of  the  "  Straw  Cel- 
lar "  it  played  a  part  in  The  Conquest  of  Ca- 
naan. It  was  there  that  Eugene  Bantry  found 
himself  involved  in  a  stabbing  affray,  and  was 
rescued  by  his  stepbrother,  Joe  Loudin.  Until 
the  appearance  of  his  recent  Harlequin  and 
Pantomime,  a  story  of  theatrical  life  in  the 
metropolis,  the  episode  in  the  Straw  Cellar  was 
Mr.  Tarkington 's  only  use  of  New  York  in  his 
fiction.  For  all  practical  purposes  the  "  Straw 
Cellar  "  of  Booth  Tarkington 's  The  Conquest  of 
Canaan  may  have  been  the  same  dance  hall  that 
Richard  Harding  Davis  casually  introduced  into 
Ranson's  Folly  under  the  name  of  McTurk's. 
Until  ten  years  or  so  ago,  there  was  on  the  east 
side  of  the  Bowery,  far  up  near  where  that  thor- 
oughfare merges  into  Third  Avenue,  a  dive 
kept  by  a  man  whose  name  closely  resembled 
McTurk.  In  the  Western  army  post  which  was 
the  scene  of  Ranson's  activities  and  occasional 


88  THE  NEW  YOEK 

impertinences  there  was  a  whisper  that  Cahill, 
the  post  trader,  and  the  father  of  Mary  Cahill, 
the  heroine,  had  once  kept  bar  for  McTurk. 
Cahill  heard  the  whisper,  sullenly  denied  it,  but 
in  an  unguarded  moment  bewrayed  an  incrimi- 
nating familiarity  with  the  cry  of  the  Whyo 
Gang. 

Some  twenty  years  ago  there  were  a  number 
of  New  York  newspaper  men  who  had  the  habit 
of  dining  at  the  same  table.  They  met  at  Mou- 
quin's,  Pedro's,  or  some  like  place  in  the  neigh- 
bourhood of  Printing  House  Square.  Stephen 
Crane,  Charles  K.  Gaines,  Edward  Marshall, 
Willis  B.  Hawkins  and  Irving  Bacheller  were 
members  of  this  cheerful  company.  A  little 
club  grew  out  of  the  association  which  became 
rather  famous  in  its  time  as  "The  Sign  of  the 
Lanthorne."  In  a  part  of  William  Street, 
known  as  Monkey  Hill,  they  found  their  club 
house — a  sort  of  Swiss  chalet  approached  by  a 
hanging  stair  that  ascended  the  brick  wall  of 
an  ironmonger's  shop.  The  little  house  was 
really  an  upper  rear  extension  of  this  shop.  Its 
doorstep  rose  from  the  broad  roof  that  covered 
a  stable  yard.  Inside,  it  was  furnished  in  the 


THE  "BIG  BARRACKS"  TENEMENT  IN  FORSYTHE  STREET,  THE  SCENE 
OF  MOST  OF  THE  STORIES  OF  JULIAN  RALPH  S  "PEOPLE  WE 
PASS."  THIS  WAS  A  TYPICAL  NEW  YORK  TENEMENT  STREET 
OF  SIXTEEN  YEARS  AGO 


OF  THE  NOVELISTS  89 

fashion  of  a  ship's  cabin.  It  was  supplied  with 
many  cheerful  accessories;  there  were  fine  old 
bits  of  mahogany  and  rosewood;  leathern  win- 
dow seats,  easy-chairs,  and  all  kinds  of  lanterns. 
A  passage-way  connected  with  the  kitchen  over 
the  iron  shop.  There  the  group  ate  luncheons 
and  had  a  dinner  every  Saturday  night,  and 
there  read  to  one  another  little  tales  and 
sketches,  dealing  mostly  with  local  colour  and 
character.  Criticism  was  freely  offered  and  re- 
ceived in  good  part.  The  only  applause  allowed 
was  silence.  Some  tales  which  have  become 
famous  were  read  there  and  many  great  men  sat 
by  the  fireside  and  spent  cheerful  and  careless 
nights  with  the  company.  One  of  these  tales 
was  Mr.  Irving  Bacheller's  "The  Story  of  a 
Passion. ' '  That  little  sketch  of  an  old  shop  and 
violin  maker  was  first  read  and  duly  jumped 
upon  at  "The  Sign  of  the  Lanthorne." 

The  old  violin  shop  of  the  tale  was  on  the 
Bowery.  Mr.  Bacheller  called  there  one  day 
and  had  an  interesting  chat  with  the  wife  of  the 
violin  maker.  She  told  him  of  a  wonderful  old 
Maggini  which  her  husband  had  been  looking 
after  for  years,  A  certain  old  gentleman  had 


90  THE  NEW  YORK 

been  coming  into  the  shop  every  day  for  weeks 
to  look  at  the  Maggini.  They,  supposing  he 
might  be  a  customer,  allowed  him  to  look  at  the 
instrument  and  try  its  tone.  The  old  gentleman 
seemed  to  have  fallen  in  love  with  it.  He 
thrummed  and  fondled  it  every  time  he  visited 
the  shop.  The  dear  old  lady  explained  how  one 
day  when  the  old  gentleman  was  trying  the  in- 
strument she  stepped  into  the  back  room  for  a 
moment,  and  on  her  return  man  and  Maggini 
had  disappeared.  She  told  in  her  simple  way 
of  the  panic  they  fell  into  over  this  calamity. 
When  her  husband  returned  she  told  him  what 
had  happened.  "He  stood  in  the  door  and 
looked  at  me  and  went  a  lead  colour. "  There 
was  much  talk  in  the  newspapers  of  this  theft, 
but  the  Maggini  was  never  recovered.  There  is 
another  point  which  perhaps  ought  to  be  men- 
tioned in  connection  with  the  tale.  Violin 
makers  say  that  every  good  violin  has  a  certain 
individuality.  Its  tone  differs  from  that  of  any 
other  violin  in  the  world.  In  that  respect  it  re- 
sembles the  voice  of  a  human  being.  The  orig- 
inal of  the  old  violin  maker  of  ' l  The  Story  of  a 
Passion"  once  showed  Mr.  Bacheller  a  remark- 


OF  THE  NOVELISTS  91 

able  instrument  with  a  marked  richness  and  in- 
dividuality of  tone.  He  said,  "I  was  showing  it 
one  day  to  a  connoisseur/'  " Great  Scott, " 
said  he,  "I  never  heard  anything  like  that  qual- 
ity of  tone  in  a  violin  but  once,  and  that  was 
when  I  was  visiting  in  New  Orleans  in  1860. " 
"This  violin  was  there  at  that  time,"  I  told  him, 
"and  it  was  undoubtedly  the  same  violin  that 
he  had  heard. " 

Monkey  Hill,  the  home  of  the  "Lanthorne 
Club,"  was  also  used  by  Mr.  Bacheller  in  Eben 
Holden,  a  novel  which  contained  several  chap- 
ters dealing  with  the  old  Tribune  office  in  the 
days  of  Horace  Greeley.  At  the  time  of  the 
outbreak  of  the  Civil  War  there  were  on  the 
Hill  some  neat  and  friendly  looking  houses  of 
wood  and  brick  and  brownstone  inhabited  by 
small  tradesmen ;  a  few  shops,  a  big  stable,  and 
the  chalet  sitting  on  a  broad,  flat  roof  that  cov- 
ered a  portion  of  the  stable  yard.  The  yard  it- 
self was  the  summit  of  Monkey  Hill.  It  lay  be- 
tween two  brick  buildings  and  up  the  hill  from 
the  walk,  one  looking  into  the  gloomy  cavern  of 
the  stable ;  and  under  the  low  roof,  on  one  side, 
there  were  dump-carts  and  old  coaches  in  vary- 


92  THE  NEW  YOEK 

ing  stages  of  infirmity.  ' '  There  was  an  old  iron 
shop,  that  stood  flush  with  the  sidewalk,  flanking 
the  stable  yard.  A  lantern  and  a  mammoth  key 
were  suspended  above  the  door,  and  hanging 
upon  the  side  of  the  shop  was  a  wooden  stair 
ascending  to  the  chalet.  The  latter  had  a 
sheathing  of  weather-worn  clapboards.  It 
stood  on  the  rear  end  of  the  brick  building,  com- 
municating with  the  front  rooms  above  the  shop. 
A  little  stair  of  five  steps  ascended  from  the 
landing  to  its  red  door  that  overlooked  an  ample 
yard  of  roofing,  adorned  with  potted  plants. 
The  main  room  of  the  chalet  had  the  look  of  a 
ship 's  cabin.  There  were  stationary  seats  along 
the  wall  covered  with  leathern  cushions.  There 
were  port  and  starboard  lanterns,  and  a  big  one 
of  polished  brass  that  overhung  the  table.  A 
ship's  clock  that  had  a  noisy  and  cheerful  tick 
was  set  in  the  wall.  A  narrow  passage  led  to 
the  room  in  front,  and  the  latter  had  slanting 
sides.  A  big  window  of  little  panes,  in  its 
further  end,  let  in  the  light  of  William  Street. 

In  Ludlow  Street  was  the  home  of  Lena  (Ed- 
ward W.  Townsend's  "By  Whom  the  Offence 
Cometh "),  before  she  went  to  live  with  Bat  the 


OF  THE  NOVELISTS  93 

pickpocket.  One  of  the  dim  alleys  that  lead 
back  from  Eivington  Street  was  used  by  Charles 
Dudley  Warner  in  The  Golden  House;  it  wafe 
also  in  Eivington  Street  that  Van  Bibber 
thrashed  the  toughs  with  a  scientific  vehemence 
which  showed  that  he  might  have  risen  to  high 
distinction  in  the  welter  or  light-weight  divi- 
sion. Meeting  on  the  northwest  corner  of  Eiv- 
ington Street  and  the  Bowery,  John  Suydam 
and  the  novelist  De  Euyter  start  out  together  in 
"The  Search  for  Local  Colour"  (Brander  Mat- 
thews) ;  near  by  Chimmie  Fadden  made  an  ef- 
fective political  speech  from  the  tail  end  of  a 
cart,  and  the  atmosphere  and  life  of  this  quar- 
ter of  the  city  were  admirably  portrayed  in  a 
short  fugitive  sketch  called  " Extermination,'' 
by  J.  L.  Steffens,  published  in  a  New  York  news- 
paper years  ago.  The  scene  of  "Extermina- 
tion" was  Cat  Alley,  opposite  the  Police  Head- 
quarters in  Mulberry  Street.  *  '  Looney  Lenny ' ' 
was  "Silly  Willie"  or  "Willie"  Gallegher,  a 
messenger  for  the  headquarters  newspaper 
men.  Brander  Matthews  has  written  of  the  old 
wooden  houses  of  this  neighbourhood  "as  pa- 
thetic survivals  of  the  time  when  New  York  still 


94    NEW  YOEK  OF  THE  NOVELISTS 

remembered  that  it  had  been  New  Amsterdam. " 
Here  he  found  the  streak  of  local  colour  that 
went  to  make  " Before  the  Break  of  Day." 
While  the  telephone  number  was  given,  the  sa- 
loon of  the  story  was  purely  imaginary.  The 
episode  on  which  the  tale  was  based  actually 
took  place  in  a  house  in  Denver. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

The  Ghetto— Sidney  Kosenfeld— Abraham  Cahan-— The 
Kosciuszko  Bank — James  Oppenheim — East  Broadway — 
Division  Street— Norfolk  Street. 

IN  the  last  year  or  so  of  the  nineteenth  century 
the  note  of  the  New  York  Ghetto  was  first  sound- 
ing in  literature.  From  Eussian  Poland, 
where  he  was  born  in  1862,  by  way  of  Holland 
and  London,  to  the  lower  East  Side  came  Sidney 
Eosenfeld.  He  found  employment  as  a  tailor 
in  a  sweatshop,  but  was  obliged  to  abandon  this 
work  on  account  of  failing  health,  and  became 
a  penny-a-liner  on  the  Yiddish  newspapers. 
The  Songs  from  the  Ghetto — plaintive,  won- 
dering heart  notes — of  this  tailor  poet  paved  the 
way  for  the  work  that  Abraham  Cahan  did  in 
prose  fiction.  Israel  Zangwill  recognised  in  Ca- 
han 's  "Yekl"  the  only  Jew  in  American  fic- 
tion. "Yekl"  worked  in  a  sweatshop  in  Pitt 
Street.  In  The  Imported  Bridegroom  Cahan 
dealt  with  the  New  York  of  1880  or  thereabouts, 
and  the  old  Ghetto  in  the  neighbourhood  of 

95 


96  THE  NEW  YOEK 

Bayard  and  Catharine  Streets  which,  in  the 
years  following  the  Civil  War,  had  been  settled 
by  a  prosperous  class  of  Eussian  Jews.  The 
quarter,  part  of  which  remained  at  the  time  of 
the  writing  of  the  story,  is  now  entirely  gone. 
About  the  time  of  the  writing  of  Tekl  and  The 
Imported  Bridegroom  Mr.  Cahan  was  a  re- 
porter on  the  New  York  Commercial  Advertiser. 
He  is  now,  and  has  been  for  a  number  of  years, 
the  editor  of  Vorwaerts,  the  leading  Jewish  pa- 
per of  New  York,  and  in  that  capacity  has  been 
in  daily  contact  with  the  Ghetto,  but  so  swift 
have  been  the  changes  in  that,  as  in  most  other 
sections  of  the  city,  that  he  would  probably  find 
too  much  for  him  the  task  of  finding  the  Essex 
Street  sweatshop  of  the  Lipmans,  the  home  of 
Boris  and  Tatyana  in  Madison  Street,  or  the 
Cherry  Street  tenement  house  to  which  Nathan 
and  Goldy  repaired  after '  *  A  Ghetto  Wedding. ' ' 
Fifteen  years  ago  Mr.  Cahan  told  the  writer 
that  there  were  four  distinct  New  York  Ghettos : 
the  great  Ghetto  bounded  by  the  East  Eiver,  by 
Cherry  Street,  by  the  Bowery,  and  by  East 
Tenth  Street ;  the  Ghetto  lying  between  Ninety- 
eighth  and  One  Hundred  and  Sixteenth  Streets, 


OF  THE  NOVELISTS  97 

east  of  Central  Park ;  the  Brownsville  Ghetto  in 
the  Twenty-sixth  Ward,  Brooklyn ;  and  the  Wil- 
liamsburg  Ghetto.  Even  then  the  first  men- 
tioned was  the  largest  Ghetto  in  the  world, 
greater  even  than  the  Warsaw  Ghetto,  and  Hes- 
ter Street,  its  heart,  was  known  throughout 
Europe.  Into  the  Ghetto  of  Yekl  have  come  the 
men  and  women  of  James  Oppenheim,  Bruno 
Lessing,  and  Montague  Glass,  and  the  little  Jew- 
ish children  of  the  sketches  of  Myra  Kelly. 
Hester  Street,  four  blocks  east  of  the  Bowery, 
is  the  scene  of  Lessing 's  Children  of  Men,  while 
the  firm  of  Potash  and  Perlmutter,  wishing  to 
borrow  money,  hurried  from  the  loft  in  Lispe- 
nard  Street,  which  was  their  original  home  in 
the  cloak  and  suit  business,  crossed  Broadway, 
and  dodging  the  pushcarts  and  the  children  on 
Grand  Street,  found  their  way  to  the  doors  of 
the  Kosciuszko  Bank. 

Perhaps  there  is  no  novel  that  better  mirrors 
the  New  York  Ghetto  of  the  last  decade  than 
James  Oppenheim 's  Dr.  East.  In  it  are  flung 
before  the  reader  the  pathos,  the  squalor,  the 
ambitions,  the  heartaches  of  the  men  and  women 
of  the  great  melting  pot.  And  the  trail  of  the 


98  THE  NEW  YORK 

story  leads  intimately  from  street  to  street.  To 
Mr.  Oppenheim  as  to  Mr.  Hughes,  Allen  Street, 
shut  out  from  the  light  by  the  elevated  railway 
overhead,  is  particularly  repulsive.  On  East 
Broadway,  in  a  familiar  old  tenement  with  a 
musty  hallway,  was  Dr.  East's  home  and  office. 
His  devotion  to  his  profession  did  not  blind  him 
to  the  colour  of  the  life  about  him.  The  lighted 
windows  of  one  of  these  hideous  tenements  at 
night  conjured  up  to  him  a  whole  novel — a  whole 
tragedy  or  comedy.  To  his  mind  there  were 
greater  dramas  down  East  Broadway  than 
Shakespeare  ever  suspected.  In  Division 
Street,  just  beyond  where  the  "el"  curved  in 
from  Allen  on  its  way  downtown,  was  the  four- 
story,  green-painted  tenement  in  which  the 
Grabo  family  dwelt.  On  the  ground  floor  was 
an  artificial  flower  factory;  in  the  cellar  lived 
the  Matches  Man,  the  beggar  who  made  his  way 
into  uptown  brownstone  houses  with  a  single 
box  of  unbuyable  matches.  The  home  of  the 
Sinns,  where  the  doctor  and  his  wife  attended 
the  golden  wedding,  was  definitely  placed  at  No. 
76  Henry  Street.  Another  episode  shows  Nor- 
folk Street  seen  from  the  second  story  of  a  tene- 


OF  THE  NOVELISTS  99 

merit,  "a  grey,  foaming  torrent  of  faces  and 
forms — eddies  of  fat  women  in  shrill  council — 
homeward  racing  pushcarts,  with  their  back- 
bent  man-power — laughing  cataracts  of  chil- 
dren— ancient  men  lounging  at  the  doors  of  lit- 
tle shops — the  evening  tide  of  the  spent  toilers 
— here  and  there  a  blue  arc  light  glaring  in  the 
dying  day — and  one  block  downtown  the  Grand 
Street  crossing,  glowing  ruddy  gold  with  the 
western  sun."  Everywhere  are  flashes  of  de- 
scription of  Grand  Street ;  of  the  Canal  Street 
station  of  the  Second  Avenue  elevated;  of  the 
Seward  Playground  Park  and  the  Educational 
Alliance ;  of  the  East  Eiver  waterfront ;  and  the 
local  colour  is  not  a  thing  apart,  but  the  very 
life  blood  of  the  book.  Incidentally  the  original 
of  Dr.  East  was  a  certain  Dr.  Stark. 


CHAPTEE  IX 

Tales  of  Mean  Streets— Henry  Street— Grand  Street- 
Mulberry  Street — Chinatown — Helen  Van  Campen — The 
Slums  of  Stephen  Crane. 

IN  Henry  Street  was  the  first  New  York  home 
of  the  Everetts  (Edgar  Fawcett's  A  New  York 
Family)  after  their  migration  from  Hoboken. 
The  Everett  children  attended  school  in  Scam- 
mel  Street.  That  was  in  the  early  half  of  the 
century,  when  Broome,  Prince  and  Bond  Streets 
were  fashionable  thoroughfares,  and  the  best 
shops  were  on  Grand  Street  and  the  Bowery. 
With  the  passing  of  the  Bend  disappeared  Mul- 
berry Court,  the  strange,  grim  and  picturesque 
bit  of  proletarian  New  York  that  Edward  W. 
Townsend  described  in  A  Daughter  of  the  Tene- 
ments. The  entrance  to  the  narrow  alley  that 
led  to  the  court  was  on  the  west  side  of  Mul- 
berry Street,  about  fifty  paces  below  Bayard 
Street,  and  directly  opposite  the  Italian  banks 
and  the  Italian  library.  The  site  of  Mulberry 
Court  is  marked  by  a  tree  that,  surrounded  by 

100 


NEW  YOKK  OF  THE  NOVELISTS    101 

a  circle  of  turf,  stands  in  the  northeast  corner 
of  the  new  park.  On  the  east  side  of  Baxter 
Street,  south  of  Bayard,  a  tunnel  led  back  to 
the  rear  tenement  where  Carminella  and  Miss 
Eleanor  Hazlehurst  of  North  Washington 
Square  visited  the  child  stricken  with  fever. 
The  tunnel  was  next  door  to  a  saloon.  All  this, 
of  course,  was  swept  away  when  the  block  was 
converted  into  a  park.  Mr.  Townsend,  as  be- 
came the  historian  of  this  quarter,  spoke  of  the 
colour  and  brightness  of  Mulberry  Street,  which 
was  fairly  alive  with  the  scarlet  and  orange  and 
green  and  bronze  of  the  shops  and  pushcarts. 
In  direct  contrast  was  the  hideous  blackness  of 
old  Baxter  Street,  with  its  ghastly  and  inhuman 
stretches  of  second-hand  clothes.  Moving  up 
the  steep  incline  that  begins  at  Mulberry  and 
Park  Streets,  we  find  at  the  corner  of  Mott 
Street  the  little  Eoman  Catholic  Church  of  the 
Transfiguration,  where  the  white  slaves  of 
Chinatown  died  in  Townsend 's  story  of  "The 
House  of  Yellow  Brick/'  The  House  of  Yel- 
low Brick  stands  on  the  north  side  of  Pell 
Street,  about  thirty  yards  from  the  Bowery. 
Only  a  few  doors  away  a  saloon  at  the  corner  of 


102  THE  NEW  YOEK 

Doyer  and  Pell  Streets  marks  the  site  of  the 
Old  Tree  House  in  which  Mrs.  Susanna  Bow- 
son's  "Charlotte  Temple"  died  about  1776. 
The  original  of  "Charlotte  Temple "  was  Char- 
lotte Stanley,  the  mistress  of  Lieutenant-Colonel 
John  Montresor,  the  Montraville  of  the  novel. 
She  is  buried  in  Trinity  churchyard.  At  No.  16 
Mott  Street,  a  quaint  and  striking  brick  build- 
ing only  a  few  doors  from  Chatham  Square,  was 
the  opium  den  kept  by  the  Chinaman  Chung, 
who,  as  told  in  Mr.  Townsend's  A  Daughter  of 
the  Tenements,  stole  the  papers  from  Mark 
Waters 's  office  in  the  Niantic  building  on  Ex- 
change Place.  The  Chinese  fish,  flesh  and  fowl 
shop  described  in  the  book  has  disappeared,  but 
the  restaurant  on  the  second  floor  and  the  Joss 
Temple,  with  windows  opening  on  the  iron  bal- 
cony, remain.  A  flight  of  well-worn  stone  steps 
runs  up  from  the  sidewalk  in  front.  Since  the 
structure  was  made  use  of  in  Townsend's  novel 
another  story  has  been  added.  This  building  is 
known  as  the  City  Hall  of  Chinatown.  A  little 
farther  up  Mott  Street  was  the  Chinese  restau- 
rant to  which  Lena  ("By  Whom  the  Offence 
Cometh")  went,  after  Bat  had  been  convicted 


OF  THE  NOVELISTS  103 

and  sentenced  for  picking  pockets  on  Fifth  Av- 
enue. Near  Mott  Street  lived  Berthold  Lindau, 
the  fanatical  socialist  of  Mr.  Howells  in  A  Haz- 
ard of  New  Fortunes.  A  few  blocks  away,  on 
the  Bowery  above  Bayard  Street,  was  the  At- 
lantic Garden,  thinly  disguised  under  the  name 
of  the  Arctic  Garden,  where  "Tom"  Lyon  and 
Carminella  and  her  mother  would  come  after 
the  young  heroine's  dance  was  over  for  a  real 
supper  of  beer  and  sandwiches,  and  Philip  Pey- 
ton would  1 '  send  drinks  to  the  performers  and 
hear  the  fact  alluded  to  in  the  next  song. ' '  The 
"Tivoli"  Theatre,  where  Carminella  made  her 
first  appearance  and  scored  her  early  successes, 
was,  long  ago,  given  over  to  Yiddish  melodrama. 
Eeturning  to  Baxter  Street,  a  dark  passage  run- 
ning back  from  the  dirty  green  door  of  No.  14 
led  until  two  or  three  years  ago  to  what  re- 
mained of  Murderers'  Alley,  one  of  the  most 
tragic  and  gruesome  corners  of  the  old  Five 
Points  region.  Murderers'  Alley  was  used  and 
elaborately  staged  by  the  late  Augustin  Daly 
in  his  play  called  Pique.  The  heroine,  who  was 
enacted  by  Fanny  Davenport,  was  murdered 
there.  The  Brace  Memorial  Newsboys'  Lodg- 


104  THE  NEW  YOEK 

ing  House,  where  the  idea  of  "Chimmie  Fad- 
den7'  first  came  to  Mr.  Townsend,  is  on  New 
Chambers  Street,  a  block  east  of  Park  Eow. 
Over  on  Cherry  Hill  were  born  Hefty  Burke  and 
the  disreputable  Mr.  Eaegan,  two  of  Eichard 
Harding  Da  vis's  earlier  creations.  East 
Broadway  was  the  scene  of  the  work  of  Conrad 
Dryfoos  and  of  Margaret  Vance,  described  in 
Mr.  Ho  wells 's  A  Hazard  of  New  Fortunes. 

The  old  Chinatown  was  most  intimately  por- 
trayed by  Mr.  Edward  W.  Townsend.  If  in 
the  new  Chinatown  the  claim  of  any  one  writer 
of  fiction  is  paramount,  it  is  that  of  Helen  Van 
Campen,  whose  trail  we  shall  meet  later  in  Irv- 
ing Place  and  along  the  Great  White  Way.  The 
stories  that  appeared  in  book  form  eight  or  nine 
years  ago  under  the  title  of  At  the  Actors' 
Boarding  House  were  not  confined  exclusively 
to  the  exploits  of  the  various  vaudeville  teams 
who  patronised  the  Maison  de  Shine.  There 
were  tales  that  treated  vividly  of  the  seamy  side 
of  life  in  the  neighbourhood  of  Chatham  Square, 
of  opium  joints  in  Pell  Street,  and  corner  sa- 
loons, where  the  thieves  and  pickpockets  and 
yeggmen  gather  for  the  exchange  of  confidences. 


<   O 


OF  THE  NOVELISTS  105 

There  was  "The  Fickleness  of  Pugnose  Grady's 
Girl";  and  " Dopey  Polly  Never  Eeached  the 
Orchard, "  with  its  description  of  "Boston  An- 
nie's resort  for  crooks  of  both  sexes  down  a 
dark  alley  off  Chatham  Square";  and  "The 
Finish  of  Daffy  the  Dip,"  introducing  "Canton 
Willie's"  place  in  Pell  Street;  and  "Flatnose 
Ed  Takes  His  Medicine,"  beginning  in  the  Mott 
Street  dive  of  Murphy ;  and  ' '  The  Love  of  One- 
Armed  Anne";  and  "The  Emperor's  Pipe." 
"The  wonder  of  it  all,"  Mr.  James  L.  Ford  once 
said  of  Mrs.  Van  Campen's  studies  of  the  New 
York  slums,  "is  not  that  she  has  chosen  to  por- 
tray life  in  such  unusual  places,  but  that  she 
could  do  it  so  truthfully  and  with  such  a  fine 
sense  of  humour  and  the  humanities.  When  she 
goes  down  to  Pell  Street  or  Chatham  Square  for 
characters  and  what  is  known  on  the  literary 
counters  as  'local  colour,'  she  does  not  concern 
herself  with  owl-like  speculations  on  the  'prob- 
lems of  the  slums'  or  any  of  the  fifty-seven  or 
more  varieties  of  reform — one  for  almost  every 
kind  of  crime — with  which  honest  New  Yorkers 
are  harassed  year  in  and  year  out.  The  truth 
is  that  Mrs.  Van  Campen,  working  in  the  fallow 


106  THE  NEW  YOEK 

fields  that  lie  below  Grand  Street,  has  kept  her- 
self free  from  all  taint  or  suspicion  of  Zola; 
even  as  George  Luks,  painting  butcher  boys, 
beggar  women,  and  the  bar-room  hag  with  her 
offspring,  has  escaped  the  influence  of  Forain. ' ' 
There  was  another  of  these  younger  men 
whose  characters  walked  the  lower  East  Side 
streets  that  produced  Chimmie  Fadden  and  in- 
vited the  occasional  attention  of  Cortlaridt  Van 
Bibber — the  highly  talented  and  ill-fated  Ste- 
phen Crane.  His  Red  Badge  of  Courage  is  still 
remembered,  but  little  else.  Yet  in  Crane  Rob- 
ert Barr  saw  the  man  most  likely  to  produce  the 
great  American  novel.  Crane's  Maggie — A 
Girl  of  the  Streets — even  in  the  form  in  which 
it  was  publicly  printed — was  a  very  unusual 
book.  Few  writers  have  felt  so  keenly  the  city's 
throbbing  life.  It  came  natural  to  him  to  be- 
lieve Balzac's  saying  that  the  brief  newspaper 
paragraph,  "  Yesterday,  at  four  o'clock,  a  young 
man  jumped  from  the  Pont  Neuf  into  the  Seine 
contained  all  the  elements  of  the  greatest 
novel."  As  he  wandered  through  the  streets 
Crane  was  forever  seeing  stories — tragic  sto- 
ries, of  course — in  the  flickering  lamp  lights,  the 


OF  THE  NOVELISTS  107 

wet  pavements,  the  looming  tenements,  and  fac- 
tories, and  warehouses.  "  Where  are  Rum  Al- 
ley and  Devil's  Row!"  the  present  scribe  asked 
him  many  years  ago.  "Are  they  in  the  shadow 
of  the  Bridge,  or  in  the  Corlears'  Hook  Park 
neighbourhood,  or  in  Greenwich  Village,  or 
HelPs  Kitchen?"  But  Crane  did  not  know. 
He  had  seen  them.  They  were  somewhere  in 
the  city.  They  had  haunted  him  and  still 
haunted  him.  But  in  the  course  of  just  what 
night  ramble  he  had  come  upon  them  he  had  for- 
gotten. Perhaps  Hogarth  would  have  been  at  a 
loss  to  take  a  Londoner  of  his  day  to  the  Beer 
Alley  and  Gin  Lane  of  his  prints.  When  Mag- 
gie appeared  there  was  a  chorus  of  protest  that 
it  contained  no  light,  no  hope.  But  Stephen 
Crane  explained  that  he  could  not  have  written 
the  tale  otherwise  than  he  did.  He  had  never 
been  able  to  find  in  his  types  sunshine  and  senti- 
ment and  humour.  To  them  joy  came  only  in 
the  hour  of  sodden  debauch.  But  indefinite  as 
it  was,  Crane's  proletaire  was  very  convincing, 
rising  clear  and  distinct  over  his  eccentricities 
of  style  and  diction. 


CHAPTEE  X 

The  East  side  of  0.  Henry— The  Cafe  Maginnis— The 
Blue  Light  Drug  Store — Dutch  Mike's  Saloon — No.  12  Ave- 
nue C. 

IN  his  nightly  wanderings  through  his  city  of 
Bagdad-on-the-Euphrates  (or  is  it  the  Tigris) 
the  good  Haroun-al-Raschid  in  his  golden  prime 
did  not  confine  himself  to  those  thoroughfares 
that  were  analogous  to  London's  Park  Lane, 
Paris 's  Avenue  Bois  de  Boulogne,  or  New 
York's  Riverside  Drive.  On  the  contrary  he 
preferred  to  seek  out  the  purlieus,  and  to  listen 
wisely  in  the  humble  shop  of  Fitbad  the  Tailor. 
Likewise  the  Haroun-al-Easchid  of  the  modern 
Bagdad-on-the-Subway.  The  editor-man,  or 
more  likely  two  or  three  of  him,  would  be  wait- 
ing for  the  promised  (and  in  many  instances 
already  paid  for)  story,  so  Sidney  Porter  would 
say  good-bye  to  the  companions  with  whom  he 
was  sitting  in  a  Broadway  restaurant,  proceed 
downtown,  and  stroll  along  the  Bowery  or  ad- 
jacent streets  until  he  fell  in  with  the  particular 

108 


NEW  YORK  OF  THE  NOVELISTS     109 

tramp  who  seemed  most  promising  as  copy. 
Sometimes  he  found  the  story  and  sometimes  he 
did  not.  Often,  when  the  idea  came,  it  had  ab- 
solutely nothing  to  do  with  the  Bowery,  or  with 
tramps,  or  with  two-cent  coffee,  or  with  any- 
thing remotely  related  thereto.  But  to  Sidney 
Porter  that  was  no  reason  for  withholding  the 
credit  he  considered  due  to  the  tramp.  "He 
did  not  give  me  the  idea,"  he  once  said  in  ex- 
planation, "but  he  did  not  drive  it  out  of  my 
head — which  is  just  as  important." 

Whether  the  particular  tramp  of  an  evening's 
ramble  meant  the  inked  pages  of  a  tale  of  Texas, 
or  Central  America,  or  New  Orleans,  O.  Henry's 
wanderings  about  the  East  Side  are  reflected  in 
some  twenty  or  thirty  stories  with  very  definite 
backgrounds.  The  pilgrim  following  the  trail 
can  find,  to  his  own  full  satisfaction,  the  fa- 
mous Cafe  Maginnis,  where  Ikey  Snigglefritz, 
in  the  proudest,  maddest  moment  of  his  life, 
shook  the  hand  of  the  great  Billy  McMahon. 
An  indication  as  to  the  Cafe  Maginnis 's  exact 
whereabouts  is  given  in  the  information  that 
Ikey,  leaving  it,  "went  down  Hester  Street,  and 
up  Chrystie,  and  down  Delancey  to  where  he 


110  THE  NEW  YORK 

lived. ' '  Ikey  's  home  was  in  a  crazy  brick  struc- 
ture, ' '  foul  and  awry. ' '  It  was  there  that,  some 
weeks  later,  Cortlandt  Van  Duykinck  found  him, 
and  stepped  out  of  the  pearl-grey  motor  car  to 
shake  his  hand  effusively,  thereby  completing 
the  social  triangle.  Go  down  to  the  Bowery  and 
study  the  side  streets  that  lead  to  First  Avenue 
until  you  find  the  one  in  which  the  intervening 
distance  is  the  shortest.  When  you  have  found 
that  you  will  have  no  difficulty  in  finding  the 
Blue  Light  Drug  Store  of  "The  Love  Philtre  of 
Ikey  Schoenstein. ' '  It  was  behind  the  counter 
that  Ikey  concocted  the  subtle  mixture  that  was 
designed  to  work  the  downfall  of  his  rival  in 
love,  Chunk  Macgowan.  It  was  a  love  potion 
that  Chunk  asked  for ;  it  was  a  sleeping  draught 
that  Ikey  provided.  But  Chunk,  in  a  moment 
of  nobility,  poured  it,  not  into  the  cup  of  the 
lady  love  for  whom  it  had  been  intended,  but 
into  that  of  her  reluctant  father,  with  the  re- 
sult that  Ikey 's  labour,  planned  to  frustrate  the 
impending  elopement,  brought  it  to  a  successful 
conclusion.  Somewhere  in  the  neighbourhood 
of  the  Blue  Light  Drug  Store,  probably  a  little 
farther  down  town,  was  the  saloon  of  Dutch 


OF  THE  NOVELISTS  111 

Hike,  where  the  Mulberry  Hill  gang  and  the 
Dry  Dock  gang  met  in  the  Homeric  conflict,  the 
outcome  of  which  sent  Cork  McManus,  first  to 
the  East  River  front,  and  then  to  strange  lands 
west  of  the  Bowery  and  the  adventures  narrated 
in  "Past  One  at  Rooney's."  Although  by  rea- 
son of  its  situation  Rooney's  properly  belongs 
to  another  paper,  it  may  be  identified  here  as 
Sweeney 's,  formerly  on  the  north  side  of  Twen- 
ty-ninth Street,  just  west  of  Sixth  Avenue.  On 
Second  Avenue,  near  its  southerly  end,  will  be 
found  the  boarding  house  where  Andy  Donovan 
wooed  Miss  Conway,  and  where  she  showed  him 
the  locket  containing  the  portrait  of  her  purely 
imaginary  lover  ("The  Count  and  the  Wedding 
Guest ").  In  Orchard  Street  were  the  rooms 
of  the  Give  and  Take  Athletic  Association, 
where,  as  told  in  "The  Coming  Out  of  Maggie, " 
Tony  Spinelli  played  Prince  Charming  at  the 
ball  of  the  Clover  Leaf  Social  Club  under  the 
pseudonym  of  Terry  0 'Sullivan. 

The  care  with  which  Porter  sought  his  local 
colour  is  indicated  in  "The  Sleuths, "  in  which 
a  man  from  the  Middle  West  goes  to  New  York 
to  find  his  sister.  At  her  address  he  learns  that 


112     NEW  YORK  OF  THE  NOVELISTS 

she  has  moved  away  a  month  before,  leaving 
no  clue,  and  to  help  in  the  search  he  enlists  the 
services  of  the  famous  detectives  Mullins  and 
Shamrock  Jolnes.  The  science  of  deduction 
leads  to  No.  12  Avenue  C,  which  is  described  as 
an  "  old-fashioned  brownstone  house  in  a  pros- 
perous and  respectable  neighbourhood. "  Now, 
if  any  neighbourhood  in  New  York  is  not  pros- 
perous and  respectable,  it  is  that  about  Avenue 
C  and  Second  Street.  The  Mulberry  Bend  of 
other  years  was  hardly  more  unsightly  and  un- 
kempt. 0.  Henry  had  sensed  its  offensiveness 
through  his  eyes  and  his  nostrils.  The  selection 
of  the  number  12  was  not  mere  chance.  He 
knew  that  there  was  no  such  number ;  that  on  the 
southeast  corner  was  a  saloon  bearing  the  num- 
ber 10  and  on  the  northeast  corner  the  pharmacy 
was  designated  as  No.  14.  Just  as  there  is  no 
No.  13  Washington  Square,  there  is  no  No.  12 
Avenue  C.  Also  there  is  no  No.  162  Chilton 
Street,  where  the  missing  sister  was  alleged  to 
have  been  eventually  found,  for  the  reason  that 
in  the  Borough  of  Manhattan  there  is  no  Chil- 
ton Street  at  all. 


PART  III 

THE  REMNANTS  OF  BOHEMIA 


CHAPTEE  I 

The  Hunt  for  Bohemia— The  Paris  Latin  Quarter—Find- 
ing the  New  York  Maison  Vauquer. 

IN  one  of  his  two  hundred  and  seventy-odd 
stories  0.  Henry  introduced  a  certain  restaurant 
which  will  be  visited  more  intimately  in  the 
course  of  the  present  volume.  '  '  Formerly, ' '  he 
said,  "it  was  a  resort  for  interesting  Bohe- 
mians; but  now  only  writers,  painters,  actors, 
and  musicians  go  there. ' '  That  was  half  irony 
and  half  serious.  For  whatever  else  Bohemia 
may  be  it  is  almost  always  yesterday.  With 
the  exception  of  Henry  Murger,  who  has  so 
often  been  charged  with  idealising  a  life  that 
was  in  reality  very  commonplace,  the  men  who 
have  been  most  conspicuous  in  bringing  Bo- 
hemia into  fiction,  such  men  as  du  Maurier  and 
Thackeray,  for  example,  have  drawn  upon  their 
memories,  and  tinged  their  pages  with  the 
colour  born  of  reminiscence.  "At  twenty/' 
James  Huneker  recently  chronicled,  "I  discov- 
ered with  sorrow,  that  there  was  no  such  en- 

115 


116  THE  NEW  YOEK 

chanted  spot  as  the  Latin  Quarter.  An  old 
Frenchman  informed  me  that  Paris  had  seen 
the  last  of  the  famous  Quarter  after  the  Com- 
mune, but  a  still  older  person  swore  that  the 
Latin  Quarter  had  not  been  in  existence  since 
1848."  That  is  just  it.  Probably  the  sceptic 
of  1848  would  have  contended  that  the  real  Bo- 
hemia went  out  with  the  Hundred  Days ;  the  men 
of  1812  have  explained  that  it  had  been  obsolete 
since  1789 ;  and  so  on  back  to  Frangois  Villon, 
who  himself  might  have  jeered  at  it  as  a  memory 
of  yesterday. 

For  Bohemia  is  not  a  country  or  a  neighbour- 
hood. Bather  it  is  a  state  of  mind,  or  a  suscep- 
tible period  of  life,  or  a  glow  of  reminiscence. 
There  is  one  figure  of  a  hero  that  is  always  turn- 
ing up  in  the  novels  that  are  being  written  about 
New  York.  It  is  easy  to  sketch  him.  In  age  he 
is  two  or  three  and  twenty;  he  has  just  come 
from  a  university  on  the  banks  of  a  river  in 
Massachusetts,  or  near  a  far  in-reaching  bay  on 
the  Long  Island  Sound,  or  on  the  shores  of  a 
New  Jersey  lake,  and  he  has  found  employment 
(on  a  specific  salary  of  fifteen  dollars  a  week) 
as  a  promising  cub  reporter  on  a  paper  which 


OF  THE  NOVELISTS  117 

is  designated  as  the  Evening  Sphere,  or  some- 
thing of  the  kind.  That  employment  is,  of 
course,  merely  temporary,  only  a  stepping 
stone,  a  bit  of  preparation  for  the  great,  domi- 
nant novel  of  American  life  he  is  to  write;  an 
aspiration  born  in  the  days  when  he  was  work- 
ing for  the  Lit,  or  the  Lampoon,  or  the  News. 
In  the  meantime  he  is  living  in  a  high-stooped, 
red  brick  boarding-house  on  Washington  Square 
South,  or  is  sharing,  with  another  young  genius, 
of  similar  hopes,  tastes,  and  occupation,  some- 
thing that  is  called  a  studio  somewhere  in  Green- 
wich Village,  where  the  streets  cross  one  an- 
other at  all  kinds  of  absurd  angles.  Mentally 
he  likens  the  boarding-house  to  the  Maison 
Vauquer  of  Balzac's  Pere  Goriot,  seeking  to 
find  in  some  one  of  his  fellow-lodgers  a  resem- 
blance to  Trompe-la-Mort,  or  Eugene  de  Bas- 
tignac;  or  the  studio  to  the  den  in  Pump  Court, 
the  Inner  Temple,  where  George  Warrington 
and  Arthur  Pendennis  waited  for  the  little 
printer's  boy,  and  listened  patiently  to  the 
literary  flounderings  of  Colonel  Thomas  New- 
come.  With  the  appetite  of  his  age  he  dines  at 
some  restaurant  at  a  cost  of  "deux  francs,  tin- 


118  THE  NEW  YORK 

quante"  with  "dix  sous  de  pourboire  pour  le 
gargon,"  or  at  a  chop  house  for  "two  and  six- 
pence/' Matters  not  the  queer  flavour  of  the 
gigot  or  the  toughness  of  the  grilled  kidneys. 
Just  a  little  play  of  the  imagination,  and  he  is 
in  the  Cafe  Momus,  with  Schaunard,  Marcel, 
Colline,  and  Eodolphe  of  Murger's  Vie  de  Bo- 
heme,  or  in  Flicoteaux,  of  Balzac's  Illusions 
Perdues,  or  in  the  particular  cafe  of  the  Latin 
Quarter  that  was  most  favoured  by  Du  Mau- 
rier's  Musketeers  of  the  Brush,  or  joining  in  the 
chorus  in  the  Cider  Cellar  after  some  particu- 
larly unconventional  ditty  of  Captain  Costigan. 
For  him  it  is  Bohemia,  for  Bohemia  is  singing  in 
his  heart. 

Well  the  writer  remembers  the  ardour  with 
which  he  hunted  for  Bohemia  in  the  streets 
about  Washington  Square  in  that  earlier  pil- 
grimage of  fifteen  years  ago.  "You  are  too 
late,"  said  an  older  man  discouragingly,  "Bo- 
hemia passed  with  the  passing  of  the  Eestaurant 
of  the  Grand  Vatel  in  Bleecker  Street  and  the 
Taverne  Alsacienne,  and  other  similar  hostel- 
ries.  Of  course  there  used  to  be  a  Bohemia. 
The  men  of  the  eighties  knew  it  and  bits  of  it 


OF  THE  NOVELISTS  119 

survived  into  the  early  nineties.  Men  like 
Frank  E.  Stockton  and  Henry  Cuyler  Banner 
and  Laurence  Hutton  and  Edgar  Fawcett  and 
Edgar  Saltus  tasted  its  joys  and  its  ennuis. 
But  now  it  is  gone,  all  gone,"  he  shrugged  his 
shoulders  with  disillusionment  of  the  man  who 
has  passed  his  thirtieth  year.  "And  we  shall 
never  see  it  again."  Very  likely  the  past  to 
which  this  pessimist  referred  was  equally  scep- 
tical. Very  likely  the  men  who  foregathered  at 
the  Grand  Vatel,  or  the  more  modest  Taverne 
Alsacienne,  where  the  dinner  of  four  courses 
vin  compris,  cost  thirty-five  cents,  or  at  Oscar's, 
opposite  the  old  Academy  of  Design,  a  kind  of 
New  York  "Back  kitchen"  of  nearly  forty 
years  ago,  shook  their  heads  sadly  as  they  de- 
plored the  Bohemia  that  was  no  more — the  Bo- 
hemia that  had  gone  out  with  Pfaff  's  down  on 
Broadway. 


CHAPTER  II 

The  Old-Time  Haunts— The  Grand  Vatel— The  Taverne 
Alsaeienne — PfafFs. 

IN  view  of  the  allusions  to  the  Grand  Vatel  and 
the  Taverne  Alsaeienne  perhaps  a  few  lines  of 
description  will  not  be  out  of  place.  Thirty- 
seven  years  ago  Mr.  William  H.  Rideing,  had  an 
article  in  Scribner's  Magazine  on  "The  French 
Quarter  of  New  York"  as  it  then  was.  Natu- 
rally there  was  much  said  of  the  two  hostelries 
in  question.  In  the  Grand  Vatel  the  floor  was 
sanded,  and  the  little  tables  were  covered  with 
oil  cloth,  each  having  a  pewter  cruet  in  the 
centre.  Behind  a  little  desk  in  a  corner  sat  the 
landlady,  a  woman  of  enormous  girth,  with 
short  petticoats  that  revealed  her  thick,  white 
woollen  socks.  Over  her  head  were  perched  two 
noisy  parrots  of  revolutionary  tendencies.  The 
sign  of  the  Grand  Vatel  indicated  an  exceed- 
ingly moderate  tariff,  thus:  Tous  les  plats, 
eight  cents;  cafe  superieur,  three  cents,  and 

cafe  au  lait,  five  cents ;  but  the  menu  was  such  a 

120 


NEW  YORK  OF  THE  NOVELISTS     121 

marvel  that  it  is  worth  reproducing.  A  dish 
of  soup  and  a  plate  of  beef  and  bread  were  ten 
cents;  soup  aux  croutons,  that  is,  with  toasted 
crusts,  cost  five  cents ;  bceuf,  legumes,  ten  cents ; 


THE     OLD     RESTAURANT     OF     THE     GRAND 
VATEL  ON   WEST  HOUSTON   STREET 

veau  a  la  Marengo,  twelve  cents;  mouton  a  la 
Ravigote,  ten  cents;  ragout  de  moutons  aux 
pommes,  eight  cents  ^bosuf-  braise  aux  oignons, 
ten  cents;  macaroni  au  gratin,  six  cents;  celeri 


122  THE  NEW  YOEK 

salade,  six  cents;  compote  de  pommes,  four 
cents;  fromage  Neufchdtel,  three  cents;  Lim- 
bourg,  four  cents,  and  Gruyere  three  cents. 
Bread  was  one  cent  extra. 

The  Taverne  Alsacienne  in  Greene  Street  was 
somewhat  lower  in  the  social  scale.  The  en- 
trance was  a  gloomy  basement  with  an  impover- 
ished bar  at  one  side  and  a  much  worn  billiard 
table  at  the  end.  It  mattered  not  what  the  hour 
was,  whether  in  the  forenoon,  afternoon,  or  past 
midnight,  a  circle  of  men  were  gathered  around 
the  tables  absorbed  in  piquet,  ecarte,  or  vingt-et- 
un.  Most  of  them  were  without  coats.  Keen 
glances  were  shot  at  intruders;  for  the  tavern 
had  a  certain  clientele,  outside  of  which  it  had 
few  customers,  and  suspicion  was  rife  at  an  in- 
vasion. A  stranger  in  the  Taverne  Alsacienne 
in  those  days  was  very  likely  to  be  a  spy  or  a 
detective,  and  the  habitues  were  sensitive  under 
inspection. 

When  the  Grand  Vatel  and  the  Tavern  Al- 
sacienne that  were  flourished,  the  earlier  Bo- 
hemia that  was  summed  up  in  Pfaff's  was  a 
memory.  Yet  it  is  linked  to  the  city  of  to-day 
in  the  person  of  Mr.  Howells,  who  has  recorded 


OF  THE  NOVELISTS  123 

how,  on  his  first  visit  to  New  York,  he  supped 
at  the  table  under  the  pavement,  and  was  pre- 
sented to  Walt  Whitman.  The  old  beer  cellar, 
in  the  years  immediately  preceding  the  Civil 
War,  was  in  the  basement  of  a  store  in  Broad- 
way two  or  three  doors  above  Bleecker  Street. 
Occasional  visitors  were  Bayard  Taylor  and  Ed- 
mund Clarence  Stedman,  but  Artemus  Ward, 
Fitzhugh  Ludlow,  Thomas  Bailey  Aldrich,  Wil- 
liam Winter,  Charles  G.  Halpine,  George  Ar- 
nold, the  "poet  of  beer,"  who  sang  "We  were 
very  merry  at  Pfaff ' s,"  and  Fitzjames  O'Brien, 
the  "gipsy  of  letters" — those  were  the  quaff- 
ing, smoking,  chanting  Bohemians  of  letters  of 
the  year  1860  or  thereabouts.  They  were  all 
young  then,  or  most  of  them  were ;  living  by  the 
pen  was  a  precarious  mode  of  existence ;  so  per- 
haps about  Pfaff's  there  was  the  flavour  of  a 
real  Bohemia. 


CHAPTER  HI 

Washington  Square — Henry  James — Brander  Matthews 
— The  Midge — As  Bunner  Saw  the  Square. 

HENRY  JAMES,  in  his  novel,  Washington  Square, 
spoke  of  the  locality  having  "a  kind  of  estab- 
lished repose  which  is  not  of  frequent  occur- 
rence in  other  quarters  of  the  long,  shrill  city; 
it  has  a  richer,  riper  look  than  any  of  the  upper 
ramifications  of  the  great  longitudinal  thorough- 
fare— the  look  of  having  had  something  of  a  so- 
cial history."  Probably  in  the  last  words  we 
have  the  key  to  the  hold  which  the  Square  has 
had  on  almost  every  novelist  who  has  written  of 
New  York  life.  An  imaginary  circle,  with  its 
centre  in  the  white  Memorial  Arch  and  a  radius 
of  five  or  six  hundred  yards,  would  hold  fully 
one-half  of  what  is  best  in  the  local  colour  of 
New  York  fiction.  That  is  true  to-day,  and  it 
was  more  strikingly  so  with  the  fiction  of  fifteen 
years  ago.  In  the  two  short  blocks  from  Mac- 
dougal  Street  to  Washington  Square  East, 
along  the  north  side  of  the  quadrangle,  are  many 

124 


NEW  YOEK  OF  THE  NOVELISTS     125 

of  the  structures  that  served  in  the  books  of 
Brander  Matthews,  Henry  James,  F.  Hopkin- 
son  Smith,  Edward  W.  Townsend  and  Julian 
Ealph.  On  the  south  side  lived  Captain  Peters 
and  Philip  Morrow.  Only  a  few  blocks  away 
were  the  Casa  Napoleon  of  Janvier,  the  struc- 
ture in  which  Colonel  Carter  lived;  the  Gari- 
baldi of  James  L.  Ford;  the  office  of  Every 
Other  Week  exploited  in  A  Hazard  of  New  For- 
tunes; the  house  where  Van  Bibber  found  his 
burglar;  the  home  of  the  Lauderdales — the  list 
is  a  very  long  one.  And  it  is  curious  to  note 
that  novelists,  who  elsewhere  were  at  best  su- 
perficial, here  became  sincere  and  convincing. 
Dr.  Sloper's  house,  described  in  Henry  James's 
Washington  Square,  is  on  the  north  side  of  the 
Square,  between  Fifth  Avenue  and  Macdougal 
Street.  In  1835,  when  Dr.  Sloper  first  took  pos- 
session, moving  uptown  from  the  neighbour- 
hood of  the  City  Hall,  which  had  seen  its  best 
days  socially,  the  Square,  then  the  ideal  of  quiet 
and  genteel  retirement,  was  enclosed  by  a 
wooden  paling.  The  structure,  in  which  the 
Slopers  lived,  and  its  neighbours  were  then  sup- 
posed to  embody  the  last  results  of  architec- 


126  THE  NEW  YORK 

tural  science.  It  was  then  and  is  to-day  a  mod- 
ern house,  wide-fronted  with  a  balcony  before 
the  drawing-room  windows,  and  a  flight  of  white 
marble  steps  ascending  to  a  portal  also  faced 
with  white  marble.  In  the  twenties  Mrs.  Sloper 
was  "one  of  the  pretty  girls  of  the  small  but 
promising  capital  which  clustered  about  the 
Battery  and  overlooked  the  Bay,  and  of  which 
the  uppermost  boundary  was  indicated  by  the 
grassy  waysides  of  Canal  Street."  A  few 
doors  away  was  the  home  of  Mrs.  Martin,  known 
as  "the  Duchess  of  Washington  Square,"  which 
Brander  Matthews  assured  us,  in  The  Last 
Meeting,  "has  now  regained  the  fashion  it  had 
lost  for  a  score  of  years."  George  William 
Curtis  babbled  charmingly  of  the  old  square  in 
Prue  and  I. 

Mr.  Howells,  in  A  Hazard  of  New  Fortunes, 
wrote  of  the  "old-fashioned  American  respecta- 
bility which  keeps  the  north  side  of  the  Square 
in  vast  mansions  of  red  brick,  and  the  interna- 
tional shabbiness  which  has  invaded  the  south- 
ern border  and  broken  it  up  into  lodging  houses, 
shops,  beer  gardens  and  studios."  Basil  and 
Isabel  March  came  here  when  worn  out  by  futile 


OF  THE  NOVELISTS  127 

flat-hunting  and  "strolled  over  the  asphalt 
walks  under  the  thinning  shadows  of  the  au- 
tumn-stricken sycamores."  In  one  of  the  brick 
houses  with  white  trimmings  on  Waverly 
Place,  to  the  east  of  the  Arch,  lived  Miss  Grand- 
ish  (in  Julian  Kalph's  People  We  Pass).  Petey 
Burke,  from  the  sidewalk  opposite,  watched  the 
comings  and  goings  of  Jenson,  the  husband  of 
Agnes  Whitfield,  the  angel  of  the  Big  Barracks 
tenement  on  Forsythe  Street.  The  striking  so- 
cial contrast  presented  by  the  north  and  south 
sides  of  the  Square  was  admirably  caught  by 
Mr.  Townsend  in  "Just  Across  the  Square." 
F.  Hopkinson  Smith  brought  in  the  Square  in 
Caleb  West,  Sanf  ord  living  in  a  five-room  apart- 
ment at  the  top  of  a  house  with  dormer  windows 
on  the  north  side.  His  guests  looking  out  could 
see  the  "night  life  of  the  Park,  miniature  fig- 
ures strolling  about  under  the  trees,  flashing  in 
brilliant  light  or  swallowed  up  in  dense  shadow 
as  they  passed  in  the  glare  of  the  many  lamps 
scattered  among  the  budding  foliage."  An- 
other of  these  houses  was  tenanted  by  Mrs.  De- 
laney,  of  Edgar  Fawcett's  Rutherford;  and  the 
Square  was  the  scene  of  Mrs.  Burton  Harrison's 


128 


THE  NEW  YOEK 


Sweet  Bells  Out  of  Tune.  Near  the  southeast 
corner  of  the  Square  was  the  Benedick,  a  red- 
brick bachelor  apartment  building,  used  under 


A  TEMPOBAEY  NEW  YOEK  HOME  .  OF 
HUBSTWOOD,  A  CHAEACTEB  IN  THEO- 
DOBE  DEEISEB'S  GBIM  NOVEL  OF  A 
FEW  YEABS  AGO,  "SISTER  CABBIE" 

the  name  of  the  Monastery  by  Eobert  W.  Cham- 
bers in  Outsiders. 

An  intimate  friend  of  the  late  author-editor 


OF  THE  NOVELISTS  129 

told  the  present  writer  that  The  Midge  "was 
written  by  Bunner  to  get  married  on."  The 
book  was  dashed  off  in  the  house  on  Seventeenth 
Street,  in  which  he  was  then  living.  It  was  one 
of  the  rare  occasions  on  which  Bunner  was  ever 
seen  to  work.  This  characteristic  was  always  a 
mystery  to  his  friends  and  business  associates. 
He  was  seldom  seen  at  his  writing  table,  and  yet 
the  end  of  the  year  showed  an  extraordinary 
amount  of  work  to  his  credit.  The  secret  lay 
in  the  ease  and  speed  with  which  he  wrote. 
There  has  probably  never  been  a  novel  written 
that  is  so  drenched  with  the  spirit  of  Washing- 
ton Square  as  The  Midge.  Bunner  lived  there 
in  his  younger  Bohemian  days,  and  throughout 
his  life  he  seemed  always  to  think  of  it  with  a 
great  love  and  sympathy.  To  other  writers  the 
Square  was  something  to  be  studied  in  its  archi- 
tectural aspects  or  as  a  problem  in  social  con- 
trasts. Bunner  liked  it  best  at  night,  with  the 
great  dim  branches  swaying  and  breaking  in  the 
breeze,  the  gas  lamps  flickering  and  blinking, 
when  the  tumults  and  the  shoutings  of  the  day 
were  gone  and  "only  a  tramp  or  something 
worse  in  woman's  shape  was  hurrying  across 


130  THE  NEW  YOEK 

the  bleak  space,  along  the  winding  asphalt, 
walking  over  the  Potter's  Field  of  the  past  on 
the  way  to  the  Potter's  Field  to  be."  Captain 
Peters,  or  Dr.  Peters,  as  he  preferred  to  be 
called,  lived  on  the  top  floor  of  No.  50,  a  three- 
story  brick  structure  on  the  "dark  south  side," 
between  Thompson  and  Sullivan  Streets. 
The  house,  adjoining  the  Judson  Memorial, 
stood  back  from  the  street,  and  was  even  darker 
and  gloomier  than  those  about  it.  A  low  iron 
railing,  once  green,  separated  the  sidewalk  from 
the  poor  little  plot  of  sod  and  stunted  grass. 
The  door,  a  single  step  above  the  ground,  was 
flanked  by  thin  grooved  columns.  From  the 
second-story  windows  jutted  out  little  balconies. 
It  was  through  the  dormer  windows  jutting 
from  the  roof  that  Peters  looked  out  upon  the 
Square.  In  the  story  allusion  was  made  to  two 
vacant  lots  in  the  rear,  stretching  through  to 
West  Third  Street.  " These. yards  in  summer 
were  green  and  bright,  and  in  the  centre  of  one 
there  was  a  tree."  Years  ago  buildings  were 
erected  on  this  site,  but  until  ten  or  a  dozen 
years  ago,  taking  one's  stand  on  the  east  side- 
walk of  Thompson  Street  and  looking  over  the 


OF  THE  NOVELISTS  131 

wooden  fence  in  the  rear  of  the  Memorial  Build- 
ing, the  top  branches  of  this  tree  could  be  seen. 
On  one  of  the  benches  of  the  Square  Father 
Dube  confessed  to  Dr.  Peters  the  unhappiness  of 
his  mistaken  avocation,  and  advised  the  latter  to 
brighten  his  life  by  marrying  the  Midge.  At 
the  University  Place  corner  of  the  Square  Dr. 
Peters  and  Paul  Hathaway,  to  whom  the  Midge 
was  ultimately  married,  had  their  first  meeting. 
When  the  University  of  New  York  buildings 
were  torn  down,  some  twenty  years  ago,  there 
disappeared  the  last  traces  of  Chrysalis  College, 
used  by  Theodore  Winthrop  in  Cecil  Dreeme. 
The  same  time  marked  the  passing  of  the  little 
church  in  which  Katharine  Lauderdale  and 
John  Ealston  of  the  Marion  Crawford  novels, 
were  married. 


CHAPTEE  IV 

The   Garibaldi— Brasserie  Pigault—- The    Cas&   Napoleon 
of  the  Thomas  A.  Janvier  Stories. 

FOBMEELY  as  one  went  down  Macdougal  Street 
from  the  southwest  corner  of  Washington 
Square,  where  the  French  quarter  of  other  days 
merged  into  the  Greenwich  Village  of  other 
days,  the  second  house  on  the  left-hand  side,  No. 
146,  was  a  three-story  trellised-stoop  structure 
rapidly  going  the  way  of  most  of  the  houses  of 
this  vicinity.  Behind  a  long,  narrow  table,  cov- 
ered with  dirty  white  oilcloth,  that  stood  close 
to  the  basement  windows,  directly  under  the  bal- 
cony, an  ancient  and  toothless  Italian  vended 
soft  drinks.  The  house  was  tenanted  by  three 
or  four  Italian  families.  People  acquainted 
with  this  part  of  New  York  remembered  that 
a  very  few  years  before  this  building  was  occu- 
pied by  a  rather  pretentious  Franco-Italian 
hotel.  In  the  late  seventies  and  early  eighties 
it  was  frequented  by  Bunner,  James  L.  Ford, 
Brander  Matthews  and  other  newspaper  men 

132 


NEW  YOEK  OF  THE  NOVELISTS     133 

and  artists,  and  as  such  it  was  used  by  Mr. 
Ford  in  his  humorous  sketch  "  Bohemia  In- 
vaded" under  the  name  of  the  Garibaldi.  The 
Garibaldi  was  a  basement  restaurant,  and  the 
yard  in  the  rear  beyond  the  window,  guarded  by 
thick  iron  bars,  was  littered  with  old  casks. 
Here  Tommy  Steele  and  Charlie  Play  and  Kitty 

M3UOH3Q3JJIVAJA 

TJUAOH  1 

H338  H30AJ 


.2HU3UDU  QUA 

Bainbridge  of  the  Merry  Idlers  and  all  the  gay 
Bohemians  held  high  carnival  until  young  Etch- 
ley,  the  artistic  person,  made  his  appearance 
and  precipitated  the  onslaught  of  the  Philis- 
tines. The  grated  window  in  the  rear,  through 
which  Charlie  Play  passed  in  his  caustic  com- 
ments on  the  restaurants'  commercial  habitues, 
is  still  to  be  seen.  What  was  then  the  dining- 


134  THE  NEW  YOEK 

room  was  later  partitioned  into  a  number  of 
little  living  rooms. 

With  the  strange  and  pleasant  conceit  on  the 
preceding  page  Mr.  Bunner  introduced  the  read- 
ers of  The  Midge  to  the  Brasserie  Pigault,  that 
quaint  and  mysterious  haunt  of  Dr.  Peters  and 
Father  Dube,  and  Parker  Prout,  the  old  artist, 
who  had  failed  in  his  career  because  of  too  much 
talent,  and  M.  Martin  and  old  Potain,  who  lost 
his  mind  after  his  wife's  death,  and  Ovid 
Marie,  the  curly-haired  music-teacher  from 
Amity  Street.  It  was  as  printed  that  the  pat- 
rons of  the  old  wine  shop  saw  and  liked  best  its 
sign.  Thoughts  of  that  sign  and  of  the  warmth 
and  comfort  and  cleanliness  within,  and  of 
Madame  Pigault,  neat  and  comely,  knitting — 
now  knitting  t'other  side  of  Styx — and  of  the 
sawdust-covered  floor  and  of  the  little  noises 
of  a  gentle  sort  inspired  Mr.  Bunner  to  that  fine 
anti-prohibition  sermon  in  which  he  showed 
with  truth  and  keen  humour  the  "  estimable 
gentlemen  who  go  about  this  broad  land  de- 
nouncing the  Demon  Drink,"  that  there  were 
wine  shops  not  wholly  iniquitous  and  that  bred 
not  crime,  but  gentleness  and  good  cheer.  But 


OF  THE  NOVELISTS  135 

not  only  has  there  been  for  many  years  no  trace 
of  the  Brasserie  Pigault;  it  is  doubtful  if  it 
ever  had  any  tangible  existence.  Brasserie  Pi- 
gault, Mr.  Ford,  who  knew  Bunner  in  the  early 
days,  says,  was  any  one  of  the  quaint  little 
French  wine  shops  of  which  there  were  so  many 
in  the  quarter  to  the  south  of  Washington 
Square  in  the  later  seventies  and  early  eighties. 

No.  159  Greene  Street,  the  site  of  the  old 
French  bakery  mentioned  in  The  Midge,  has 
been  long  occupied  by  a  tall  office  building.  On 
Houston  Street,  near  what  was  then  South  Fifth 
Avenue,  was  the  shop  of  Goubaud,  the  dealer  in 
feathers,  where  died  Lodviska  Leezvinski,  the 
mother  of  the  Midge.  Charlemagne's,  where 
Peter  and  the  Midge  went  often  to  dine,  was 
probably  our  old  friend,  the  Eestaurant  du 
Grand  Vatel. 

"De  Duchess,"  Chimmie  Fadden,  his  friend 
"de  barkeep,"  and  the  latter 's  "loidy  fren," 
during  one  of  their  outings  in  the  city  strolled 
down  South  Fifth  Avenue  and  lunched  together 
at  the  restaurant  of  the  White  Pup.  The  iden- 
tity of  the  White  Pup  is  obvious  enough  to  any 
one  whose  memory  of  New  York  goes  back  a 


136  THE  NEW  YOEK 

dozen  years  or  so.  It  served  many  times  as  a 
background  for  fiction.  For  example,  it  was 
used  by  Miss  Ellen  Glasgow  for  one  of  the  New 
York  scenes  of  The  Descendant.  Eecrossing 
Washington  Square  and  moving  up  Fifth  Ave- 
nue we  find  at  19  and  21  West  Ninth  Street  two 
houses  made  over  into  furnished  rooms.  But 
only  a  short  time  back  and  it  was  the  little 
Franco- Spanish  South-American  Hotel,  which 
was  the  original  of  the  Casa  Napoleon,  the 
modest  and  inviting  hostelry  where  lived  so 
many  of  Mr.  Thomas  Janvier's  men  and  women 
— Mrs.  Myrtle  Vane,  who  did  the  New  York  so- 
ciety news  for  Western  papers;  Mr.  Dunbar 
and  Miss  Bream,  Mr.  Witherby  and  Mrs.  Mor- 
timer, the  web-spinning  capitalist  in  a  small 
way — the  home  of  the  genial  Duvant  and  the 
refuge  of  the  family  Efferati.  "Janvier  knows 
his  New  York,"  once  said  John  Breslin — high 
praise,  for  few  have  known  the  city  as  did  the 
old  fire  chief.  His  comments  on  the  New  York 
of  some  of  the  other  writers  were  more  forceful 
and  less  polite. 

The  Casa  Napoleon — or  the  Hotel  Griffou,  to 
give  it  its  real  name — had  another  literary  in- 


OF  THE  NOVELISTS  137 

terest.  It  was  the  little  restaurant  to  which 
Mr.  Howells  sent  Bay  (in  The  World  of  Chance) 
during  the  young  writer's  first  weeks  in  New 
York.  Mr.  Janvier,  who  at  such  times  as  he 
was  in  the  later  years  of  his  life  in  New  York 
was  a  frequent  visitor  at  the  Casa  Napoleon, 
dwelt  at  length  in  his  stories  on  the  establish- 
ment's "attractive  look,"  and  the  balcony  that 
ran  along  the  line  of  the  second-story  windows, 
in  which  flowers  were  growing  in  great  green 
wooden  tubs.  The  Louis  Napoleon  of  Mr.  Jan- 
vier's tales  was  Louis  Napoleon  Griff ou. 

In  the  odd  little  white  frame  building  that  in 
bygone  years  was  No.  58%  West  Tenth  Street, 
Frederick  Olyphant,  who  figures  in  Brander 
Matthews 's  The  Last  Meeting,  had  his  studio. 
The  house  was  reached  from  "West  Tenth  Street 
by  passing  through  a  dim  alley,  "worn  by  the 
feet  of  three  generations  of  artists."  This 
structure,  which  holds  a  very  important  place 
in  the  New  York  of  fiction,  will  later  be  de- 
scribed at  length.  The  artist  life  about  Tenth 
Street  was  also  the  theme  of  the  Van  Dyke 
Brown  stories.  On  Eleventh  Street,  between 
Fifth  and  Sixth  Avenues,  was  the  building  in 


138    NEW  YOEK  OF  THE  NOVELISTS 

which  Fulkerson,  Conrad  Dryfoos  and  Basil 
March  conducted  Every  Other  Week.  It  was 
on  Union  Square,  in  front  of  Brentano's,  that 
Margaret  Vance  and  Conrad  Dryfoos  met  for 
the  last  time  before  the  latter  was  killed  in  the 
great  strike. 


CHAPTEE  V 

The  Square  of  Phillips  and  Whitman—The  Boarding 
House  of  "The  Great  God  Success"— How  Phillips  Began 
as  a  Novelist— The  Trail  of  "Predestined." 

So  rich  is  Washington  Square  South  with  its 
frontage  of  decay,  degeneration,  and  poverty, 
grinning  derisively  across  the  Square  at  Wash- 
ington Square  North,  in  its  associations  with 
the  fiction  dealing  with  New  York  life,  that  it  is 
difficult  to  make  a  beginning.  But  let  us  stop, 
first  of  all,  before  a  three-story,  red  brick  struc- 
ture between  Sullivan  and  Macdougal  Streets, 
a  structure  that  has  to  do  not  only  with  an  in- 
dividual tale,  but  with  the  turning  point  of  a 
career  that  was  as  rich  in  achievement  as  it  was 
unhappily  brief.  David  Graham  Phillips  was 
living  in  that  house  when  he  wrote  The  Great 
God  Success,  and  there  he  laid  the  scenes  of  a 
story  that  was  in  many  ways  autobiographical. 
From  the  inside  he  knew  the  boarding-house 
with  the  high  stoop  on  the  steps  of  which  the 
boarders  gathered  of  summer  evenings  to  watch 

139 


140  THE  NEW  YOEK 

the  children  sprung  from  many  nations  play  in 
the  Square.  In  the  story  Howard,  the  hero, 
two  months  out  of  Yale,  finds  employment  with 
inadequate  returns  on  the  reportorial  staff  of 
the  News  Record  (The  New  York  World)  and 
goes  to  live  in  this  house,  where  he  meets  the 
girl  Alice  and  experiences  one  of  life's  poign- 
ant tragedies.  David  Graham  Phillips,  in 
writing  The  Great  God  Success,  was  trying  his 
prentice  hand,  which  means  that  he  was  in  a 
measure  in  the  imitative  stage,  and  there  is  a 
curious  echo  of  Balzac's  Pere  Goriot  in  one  par- 
agraph of  the  tale.  Like  Madame  Vauquer 
(nee  de  Conflans)  Mrs.  Sands  was  keeping  what 
might  be  called  une  pension  bourgeoise.  And  in 
the  Pension  Sands,  as  in  the  Pension  Vauquer, 
a  new  lodger,  we  were  told,  generally  took  the 
best  rooms ;  then  slowly  or  swiftly  came  the  so- 
cial and  financial  disintegration,  marked  by 
ascending  step  from  story  to  story  until  the 
cubby  hole  under  the  eaves  was  reached.  Only 
occasionally  in  the  tale  the  characters  moved  far 
from  the  neighbourhood.  Just  round  the  cor- 
ner, in  South  Fifth  Avenue  as  it  was  then 
called,  was  formerly  the  Restaurant  of  the  Chat 


OF  THE  NOVELISTS  141 

Noir,  where  Howard  and  Alice  usually  dined. 
True,  there  were  occasionally  times  when  they 
went  farther  afield,  to  the  Manhattan  over  on 
Second  Avenue,  or  to  the  Terrace  Garden  fat 
up  on  the  East  Side.  As  has  been  indicated,  it 
was  The  Great  God  Success  that  led  Phillips  to 
take  the  decisive  step.  It  was  against  the 
wishes  and  advice  of  many  of  his  closest  friends. 
They  pointed  out  that  it  was  giving  up  a  com- 
fortable position  in  journalism  for  the  uncer- 
tainties of  fiction.  They  called  it  "  spoiling  a 
good  newspaper  man  to  make  a  poor  novelist." 
It  was  indeed  a  step  that  called  for  courage. 
Phillips 's  only  perceptible  resources  for  the  mo- 
ment were  two  articles  that  had  been  accepted 
by  George  Horace  Lorimer  for  the  Saturday 
Evening  Post  at  a  price  of  seventy-five  dollars 
each. 

Few  books  of  the  last  decade  and  a  half  con- 
jure up  more  vividly  Washington  Square  than 
Stephen  French  Whitman's  Predestined,  a  very 
unusual  and  unfortunately  neglected  novel  of 
five  or  six  years  ago,  and  from  the  Square,  to 
north,  east,  south  and  west,  lead  the  trails  of 
Felix  Piers  in  the  swift,  pitiless  years  of  his 


142  THE  NEW  YOEK 

degeneration.  There  was,  on  the  south  side  of 
the  Square,  a  hotel  which  marked  a  definite  step 
on  the  way.  It  was  described  as  a  "  small  hotel, 
square,  flat-roofed,  built  of  green  brick,  six  sto- 
ries high,  the  narrow  entrance  trimmed  with  ex- 
ceedingly thin  slabs  of  greenish  marble."  As 
a  matter  of  fact,  while  Mr.  Whitman  had  a 
definite  edifice  in  mind,  a  hotel  that  for  years 
has  been  housing  writing  and  painting  men  and 
women,  the  description  was  written  in  such  a 
way  that  it  served  as  a  thin  disguise.  On  the 
north  side  of  Eighth  Street,  close  to  the  Square, 
an  old,  white  dwelling  house  had  been  converted 
into  an  Italian  restaurant  called  "  Benedetto 's," 
where  a  table  d'hote  dinner  was  served  for  sixty 
cents.  It  was  there,  through  the  tobacco  smoke, 
Felix  watched  the  patrons,  their  feet  twisted  be- 
hind chair  legs,  their  elbows  on  the  table,  all 
arguing  with  gesticulations.  Sometimes,  there 
floated  to  him  such  phrases  as:  "Bad  colour 
scheme!  Bad  colour  scheme  I"  "Sophomoric 
treatment !"  "Miserable  drawing!"  "No  at- 
mosphere!" Benedetto's,  Mr.  Whitman  ex- 
plained, was  a  Bohemian  resort.  It  may  read- 
ily be  identified  as  the  Hotel  Gonfarone  at  the 


COLONNADE  ROW.  IN  LAFAYETTE  PLACE,  OPPOSITE  THE  OLD  ASTOR  LI- 
BRARY, WAS  THIS  CURIOUS  RELIC  OF  THE  OLDER  NEW  YORK.  THESE 
HOUSES  WERE  WHITE,  WITH  TALL  PILLARS  AND  DEEP  BALCONIES. 
LITTLE  GARDENS,  SURROUNDED  BY  IRON  RAILINGS,  SEPARATED  THEM 
FROM  THE  STREET.  F.  MARION  CRAWFORD  INTRODUCED  THE  SECOND 
HOUSE  FROM  THE  NORTH  IN  THE  ROW  IN  "THE  RALSTONS,"  AND 
ANOTHER  HOUSE  WAS  USED  BY  MRS.  BURTON  HARRISON  IN  "THE 
ANGLO-MANIACS" 


OF  THE  NOVELISTS  143 

southwest  corner  of  Eighth  and  Macdougal 
Streets.  Just  one  block  to  the  south,  on  the 
south  side  of  the  street  between  the  Square  and 
Sixth  Avenue,  was  the  boarding-house  in  which 
Emma  lived  before  Felix  took  her  to  wife.  It 
was  a  house  with  old  window  shutters  and  the 
brownstone  portico  crumbling  at  the  pediment. 
There  have  been  plenty  of  bits  of  descriptive 
writing  about  Washington  Square  in  the  novels 
of  the  past  fifteen  years.  Here  is  a  fragment 
from  Predestined: 

It  had  been  drizzling:  the  pavements,  beaded  with 
rain,  showed,  under  mistily  irradiating  street  lamps, 
humid  footprints.  From  the  juncture  of  Macdougal 
Street  and  Waverly  Place,  the  trees  of  Washington 
Square  spread  out  a  mass  of  grey-black  shadows  un- 
derlaid with  the  horizontal  pearly  lustre  of  wet  asphalt 
paths.  Here  and  there,  a  yellow  shaft  of  light,  en- 
larged in  the  damp  air,  streamed  past  the  tree-trunks, 
and  beyond  upper  branches,  illuminated  window-panes 
shone  peacefully,  their  mellow  squares  etched  over,  as 
it  were,  by  delicate  traceries  of  twigs. 

On  lower  Fifth  Avenue,  two  blocks  north  of 
the  Square,  in  one  of  those  old  brick  houses  of 
massive,  plain  exterior,  with  Ionic  pillars  of 
marble  and  a  fanlight  at  the  arched  entrance, 


144  THE  NEW  YORK 

that  preserve  unobtrusively,  in  the  midst  of  a 
city  that  is  being  constantly  rebuilt,  the  pure 
beauty  of  Colonial  dwellings,  lived  the  Ferrols. 
There  Felix  had  a  welcome  home  in  the  bright 
early  days  before  the  catastrophe  that  marked 
his  first  step  on  the  downward  path.  The 
wretched  days  of  Felix's  life  with  Emma  were 
passed  in  a  flat-house  on  Second  Avenue  below 
Fourteenth  Street.  The  exact  building  that  the 
author  had  in  mind  may  be  found  on  the  east 
side  of  the  avenue  between  Eleventh  and 
Twelfth  Streets.  The  saloon  on  Fourteenth 
Street  near  Third  Avenue  which  Felix  patro- 
nised was  one  associated  with  the  name  of 
a  former  heavy-weight  prize  fighter.  Mrs. 
Snatt's  boarding-house,  where  Felix  went  to  live 
after  the  death  of  Emma,  was  on  the  north  side 
of  Thirteenth  Street,  between  Second  and  Third 
Avenues.  Three  or  four  years  ago  the  particu- 
lar house,  with  a  number  of  others,  was  torn 
down  to  make  way  for  the  back  of  a  large  the- 
atre which  fronts  on  Fourteenth  Street.  The 
trail  of  Predestined,  as  will  be  indicated  in  the 
later  papers  in  this  series,  led  to  other  parts  of 
the  city,  notably  the  old  French  Quarter  which 


OF  THE  NOVELISTS  145 

used  to  be  in  the  neighbourhood  of  Twenty- 
seventh  Street,  just  west  of  Sixth  Avenue,  and 
to  a  certain  apartment  in  West  Thirty-second 
Street,  which  was  drawn  from  a  studio  once 
occupied  by  the  artist  Harrison  Fisher. 


CHAPTER  VI 

Mr.    Davis   and   His    Van    Bibber — Stevenson's   Velvet 
Jacket— The  Fourteenth  Street  of  "The  Exiles." 

ABOUT  two  years  ago  the  late  Mr.  Richard 
Harding  Davis  and  the  writer,  in  the  former's 
home  near  Mount  Kisco,  New  York,  were  talk- 
ing of  the  New  York  literary  atmosphere  of  the 
'nineties  of  the  last  century.  "  Those  days  in 
my  case,"  Mr.  Davis  said,  "were  what  I  call  the 
velvet  jacket  days  of  our  literary  activity.  Do 
you  remember  the  velvet  jacket  of  Robert  Louis 
Stevenson?"  The  writer  confessed  that  it  was 
a  little  before  his  time,  that  he  could  not  claim 
personal  acquaintance,  but  that  it  was  familiar 
enough  through  the  old  portraits.  "We  had 
our  own  men  then,  Mr.  Howells,  Mr.  Aldrich, 
Mr.  Stockton,  and  the  rest,"  Mr.  Davis  went  on, 
"but  Stevenson  was  the  magnetic,  the  dominat- 
ing, literary  figure.  Just  as  he  himself  had 
played  the  'sedulous  ape'  to  others,  so  it  was 
the  fashion  of  young  writers  of  five  and  twenty 
years  ago  to  imitate  him.  He  came  to  us  and 

146 


NEW  YORK  OF  THE  NOVELISTS     147 

he  brought  with  him  his  velvet  jacket.  It  was 
a  famous  jacket,  and  became  a  kind  of  oriflamme 
of  the  literary  calling. "  "Something  like  Bal- 
zac's white  monk's  robe  in  the  eighteen  for- 
ties?" was  the  suggestion.  "Only  Stevenson's 
jacket  was  destined  to  become  the  father  of  an 
illustrious  line  of  jackets.  We  were  young 
then,  and  we  had  other  ideals.  The  day  of  com- 
mercialism had  not  yet  come.  We  did  not  think 
and  talk  of  how  much  a  story  earned  for  us. 
It  was  enough  that  we  had  a  story  in  Harper's, 
or  Scribner's.  With  elation  we  told  our  friends 
about  it  and  they  read  it  and  liked  it  or  criti- 
cised it.  Sometimes  we  insisted  in  reading  it 
to  them  ourselves.  But  in  that  method  danger 
lurked.  A  great  many  of  the  stories  of  those 
days  could  be  traced  to  the  velvet  jacket.  The 
young  man  sitting  down  at  his  writing  table  to 
construct  a  masterpiece  had  his  pen,  his  pad,  his 
bottle  of  ink.  Also  sometimes  an  idea.  But  to 
achieve  the  proper  method  of  inspiration,  to 
rouse  himself  to  heights  of  creative  frenzy, 
he  needed  the  jacket — just  like  that  of  R.  L.  S. 
Sacrifices  were  made  in  Bohemia  in  those  days 
for  that  jacket,  privations  were  endured.  I 


148  THE  NEW  YORK 

never  would  wear  one.  My  attitude  in  the  mat- 
ter was  regarded  as  a  fatal  eccentricity.  It 
placed  me  forever  beyond  the  pale."  Perhaps 
all  this  is  in  the  nature  of  a  digression.  But  to 
the  writer  it  seems  to  have  the  flavour  of  the 
old  days,  when  the  world  was  young,  and,  when 
in  Mr.  Da  vis's  case,  his  Cortlandt  Van  Bibber 
was  in  the  making.  Some  one  once  cruelly  yet 
cleverly  summed  up  Van  Bibber  as  "the  office 
boy's  idea  of  a  gentleman, "  and  in  this  estimate 
there  was,  perhaps,  a  certain  measure  of  truth. 
Yet,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  in  the  beginning  Van 
Bibber  was  hardly  a  real  character  at  all  or 
even  meant  as  such.  He  was  simply  a  very  cor- 
rectly dressed  and  well  manipulated  dummy 
with  the  right  sort  of  bowing  acquaintance  on 
Fifth  Avenue  and  membership  in  the  proper 
clubs — just  the  sort  of  figure  that  Mr.  Davis 
needed  for  the  expression  of  the  curious  whim 
that  might  enter  his  head.  He  enabled  the  au- 
thor to  give  a  point  and  to  work  out  a  solution 
to  all  the  little  "What  Would  You  Do  In  That 
Event "  problems  of  everyday  life.  Mr.  Davis 
sees  two  young  persons  whom  he  suspects  of 
being  a  runaway  couple,  dining  in  a  restaurant 


OF  THE  NOVELISTS  149 

near  Washington  Square ;  he  promptly  turns  it 
into  fiction  by  introducing  Van  Bibber  as  a 
mouthpiece  of  his  own  ideas  of  propriety; 
to  act  as  Best  Man  and  to  steer  off  the  pursuing 
elder  brother  of  the  groom  in  the  direction  of 
Chicago.  He  notices  a  beggar  who  has  re- 
peated the  same  story  of  starvation  to  two  or 
three  kindly  disposed  persons;  Van  Bibber  is 
brought  along  as  the  agent  of  the  proper  sort 
of  punishment.  He  perceives  in  Delmonico's  a 
servant  of  dignified  bearing  holding  a  table  for 
a  master  and  a  master >s  guests.  How  does  that 
servant  feel?  Is  not  his  soul  alive  to  some  sen- 
sations of  mortification  and  envy?  Van  Bib- 
ber's man  comes  to  solve  the  problem  as  Mr. 
Davis  sees  it.  He  muses  over  the  effect  an 
anonymous  letter  would  have  upon  certain  per- 
sons. Van  Bibber  shall  try  the  experiment. 
Whenever  there  is  a  bully  to  be  thrashed,  a 
burglar  to  be  shown  the  way  to  a  better  or  wor- 
thier life,  or  a  pair  of  little  wan-faced  East  Side 
children  to  be  delighted  with  the  joys  of  the 
swan  boats  of  Central  Park,  it  is  in  reality  Mr. 
Davis  who  is  distributing  figuratively  the  re- 
wards and  the  punishments,  with  Van  Bibber 


150  THE  NEW  YOEK 

as  only  the  puppet  answering  obediently  to  the 
dexterously  pulled  strings.  That  was  the  Van 
Bibber  of  yesterday.  Where  are  you,  oh,  Van 
Bibber  of  to-day?  You  have  come  to  forty 
years  and  more  and  may  you  be  as  fundamen- 
tally fine  in  your  maturity  as  you  were  in  the 
callower  days!  Perhaps  the  manner  in  which 
you  bearded  Carruthers  in  his  apartment  and 
lectured  him  on  a  father 's  duty  to  a  daughter 
was  a  trifle  unfortunate.  But  beneath  you  were 
youth,  and  generosity,  and  chivalry,  and  the 
spirit  of  noblesse  oblige!  The  writer  likes  to 
think  of  you  to-day  as  doing  your  share  in  the 
struggle  for  the  world's  liberty;  helping  to  hold 
the  line  in  Flanders  with  the  same  indomitable 
spirit  that,  in  former  years  and  in  kindlier 
strife,  spurred  you  to  stand  like  a  rock  in  re- 
sponse to  the  thrilling  call  of  *  *  Hold  'em !  Hold 
'em  for  Old  Nassau!";  or  perhaps,  daring  shell 
and  shrapnel  as  the  driver  in  the  American  Am- 
bulance Corps,  swift  and  efficient  in  the  per- 
formance of  your  duty,  but  not  ashamed  to  drop 
a  manly  tear  at  the  sight  of  sorrow  and  suffer- 
ing. If  Mr.  Davis  still  claimed  you  in  the  great 
and  terrible  days  that  began  in  August,  1914, 


fc  r     w  H  u 

3  8"  £  ~  § 


H    H 
S   & 


«£^S^S 


OF  THE  NOVELISTS  151 

it  was  unquestionably  upon  some  such  mission 
that  you  were  sent.  But  wherever  you  are,  Van 
Bibber,  Van! — Cortlandt,  old  boy!  (too  many 
years  has  our  friendship  endured  to  permit  of 
anything  like  formality)  Ho — no,  not  that,  but 
"Here's  to  you!",  and  "Sante!"  and,  well,  con- 
sider the  sentiment  also  expressed  in  Flemish, 
Walloon,  Italian,  Servian,  Eussian,  and  Japa- 
nese. Although  neutral,  there  is  no  reason  why 
one  should  be  a  positive  fanatic  in  one's  neu- 
trality. 

Eichard  Harding  Davis  struck  his  highest, 
best  and  most  human  note  when  telling  of  men 
and  women  lonely  and  homesick  in  other  lands. 
The  nostalgia  had  been  strong  upon  him.  It 
had  been  treasured  in  his  memory,  and  at  times 
the  balm  of  spring  air,  some  subtle  odour  of 
perfume  or  flower,  a  picture,  a  line  in  a  book  or 
a  letter,  brought  over  him  with  remarkable 
vividness  the  same  sensations  of  strange,  over- 
whelming loneliness  that  he  had  felt  some  time 
in  the  years  gone  by  when  he  was  knocking 
about  somewhere  a  few  thousand  miles  away 
from  the  lights  of  Broadway  and  the  tall  tower 
of  the  Madison  Square  Garden.  This  note 


152  THE  NEW  YOEK 

dominated  all  his  work  in  which  he  found  his 
background  in  other  lands.  He  used  it  very  ef- 
fectively a  number  of  times,  and  yet  it  never 
seemed  to  grow  stale.  It  was  a  nostalgia  that 
comes  upon  strong  men,  never  maudlin,  never 
weakly  sentimental,  but  a  great  yearning  home- 
sickness, that  expresses  itself  feelingly,  simply, 
colloquially.  Near  the  end  of  The  Exiles,  Hoi- 
combe,  the  New  York  assistant  district-attor- 
ney, leaving  Tangiers,  asked  Meakin,  the  police 
commissioner  who  had  been  indicted  for  black- 
mailing gambling  houses,  if  he  could  do  some- 
thing for  him  at  home.  In  the  latter 's  reply  we 
have  what  is  as  powerful  and  as  sincere  a  bit 
of  writing  as  Mr.  Davis  ever  did. 

"I'll  tell  you  what  you  can  do  for  me,  Holcombe. 
Some  night  I  wish  you  would  go  down  to  Fourteenth 
Street,  some  night  this  spring,  when  the  boys  are  sit- 
ting out  on  the  steps  in  front  of  the  Hall,  and  just 
take  a  drink  for  me  at  Ed  Lally's;  just  for  luck. 
That's  what  I'd  like  to  do.  I  don't  know  nothing  bet- 
ter than  Fourteenth  Street  of  a  summer  evening,  with 
all  the  people  crowding  into  Pastor's  on  one  side  of 
the  Hall  and  the  Third  Avenue  L  cars  running  by  on 
the  other.  That's  a  gay  sight,  ain't  it  now?  With 
all  the  girls  coming  in  and  out  of  Theiss's,  and  the 
sidewalks  crowded.  One  of  them  warm  nights  when 


OF  THE  NOVELISTS  153 

they  have  to  have  the  windows  open,  and  you  can  hear 
the  music  in  at  Pastor 's  and  the  audience  clapping 
their  hands.  That's  great,  isn't  it?"  Well,  he 
laughed  and  he  shook  his  head,  "I'll  be  back  there 
some  day,  won't  I?"  he  said  wistfully,  "and  hear  it 
for  myself." 

Turning  from  Meakin  to  the  versatile  Van 
Bibber,  we  find  at  the  corner  of  Ninth  Street 
and  University  Place  the  French  restaurant 
(Hotel  Martin)  from  which  he  started  out  as 
"Best  Man."  The  tables  at  which  Van  Bibber 
and  the  runaway  couple  were  dining  are  in  the 
one-story  addition  that  runs  along  Ninth  Street. 
On  the  steps  running  down  from  the  hotel  en- 
trance to  the  sidewalk  of  University  Place  Van 
Bibber  met  the  groom's  elder  brother,  and 
promptly  sent  him  off  to  Chicago.  Later  he 
wished  it  had  been  Jersey  City.  A  block  to  the 
west,  at  the  northwest  corner  of  Ninth  Street 
and  Fifth  Avenue,  is  the  house  in  which  Van 
Bibber  came  upon  his  penitent  burglar. 


CHAPTER  VII 

Purlieus  of  Greenwich  Village — The  Pie  Houses  of  "The 
Man  Hunt"— West  Tenth  Street. 

BUNNER  coined  a  striking  phrase  when  he  spoke 
of  the  "bourgeois  conservatism  of  Greenwich 
Village."  But  that  was  written  many  years 
ago  before  the  invasion  of  the  old  American 
ward  by  the  foreign  element  had  really  begun, 
and  when  a  few  minutes'  walk  from  the  tall 
clock  tower  of  Jefferson  Market  whisked  one 
back  to  the  atmosphere  and  conditions  of  the 
early  half  of  the  century.  The  sight  of  that  tall 
clock  tower  filled  the  soul  of  Chad  (Colonel 
Carter  of  Carter sville)  with  unutterable  bitter- 
ness. Brander  Matthews,  in  one  of  his  Manhat- 
tan Vignettes,  spoke  of  John  Suydam  noting  the 
"high  roof  and  lofty  terrace  above  all  the  yawn- 
ing baskets  of  vegetables  and  the  pendent  tur- 
keys." In  "Aunt  Eliza's  Triumph"  Mr. 
Townsend  took  us  to  Greenwich  Village,  Aunt 
Eliza  living  in  a  house  on  Bank  Street. 
In  the  changing  city  to-day  there  are  few 

154 


A  REMNANT  OF  THE  GREENWICH  VILLAGE  THAT  WAS. 
THE  OLD  STUDIO  HOUSES  FACING  SHERIDAN  PARK. 
THESE  HOUSES  WERE  NOS.  90  AND  92.  NO.  90 
WAS  FORMERLY  THE  HOME  OF  JULES  GUERIN, 
CHIEF  OF  COLOUR  OF  THE  PACIFIC-PANAMA 
EXPOSITION 


155 


156     NEW  YORK  OF  THE  NOVELISTS 

more  curious  corners  than  that  which  the  reader 
will  find  by  going  down  into  Greenwich  Village 
half  a  dozen  blocks  southwest  of  the  Jefferson 
Market  Police  Court.  Just  where  Barrow 
Street  and  Commerce  Street  join  there  is  a  lit- 
tle cluster  of  sinister  looking  houses  of  very 
unusual  construction.  Years  ago  Arthur  Train 
found  them  in  one  of  his  city  rambles.  The 
buildings  and  the  sordid  neighbourhood  were 
laid  away  in  his  memory  and  brought  into  use 
when  he  wrote  The  Man  Hunt.  In  that  tale  he 
introduced  a  kind  of  Thieves'  Court,  a  resort  of 
yeggmen,  into  which  the  hero  ventured  at  night 
in  his  city  wide  search  for  the  missing  man.  In 
the  tale  the  cab  turned  into  the  little  street,  *  *  A 
few  gnarled  and  distorted  trees,  whose  trunks 
burst  out  of  the  concrete  pavement,  raised  their 
dust-laden  branches,  prehensile  and  unnatural, 
into  the  starlight.  A  hundred  feet  from  where 
the  street  began  it  turned  sharply  to  the  left, 
forming  a  right  angle,  and  debouched  again  into 
another  thoroughfare.  Had  one  of  the  ends 
been  closed  it  would  have  formed  a  natural  cul- 
de-sac — an  appendix  to  one  of  the  great  canals 
of  the  city.  A  rickety  gas  lamp  leaned  danger- 


THE  "PIE  HOUSES"  OF  GREENWICH  VILLAGE.  JUST 
WHERE  BARBOW  AND  COMMERCE  STREETS  JOIN 
THERE  IS  A  LITTLE  CLUSTER  OF  HOUSES  OF  VERY 
UNUSUAL  CONSTRUCTION.  ARTHUR  TRAIN  MADE 
USE  OF  THIS  CURIOUS  BIT  OF  LOCAL  COLOUR  IN 
"THE  MAN  HUNT."  OF  THESE  HOUSES  HE 
WROTE:  "STRANGELY  ENOUGH,  WHEN  THE 
STREET  TURNED  THE  HOUSE  TURNED,  TOO,  SO 
THAT  HALF  ITS  FRONT  FACED  EAST  AND  HALF 

NORTH.      THE     NATURAL    INFERENCE    WAS     THAT 
THE  INSIDE  OF  THE  HOUSE  WAS   SHAPED  LIKE   A 
PIECE   OF  PIE,   WITH   ITS   PARTIALLY   BITTEN   END 
ABUTTING  ON  THE  CORNEfi" 
157 


158  THE  NEW  YOEK 

ously  toward  a  flight  of  high  wooden  steps  in 
the  angle  of  the  street.  Strangely  enough, 
when  the  street  turned  the  house  turned,  too,  so 
that  half  its  front  faced  north  and  half  east. 
The  natural  inference  was  that  the  inside  of  the 
house  was  shaped  like  a  piece  of  pie,  with  its 
partially  bitten  point  abutting  on  the  corner." 
The  Man  Hunt,  written  a  number  of  years  ago, 
purported  to  deal  with  events  of  the  year  1915, 
a  time  of  great  war.  With  certain  exceptions 
that  strange  corner  in  Greenwich  Village  re- 
mains as  Mr.  Train  described  it.  The  gnarled 
trees  have  gone,  and  from  an  old  inhabitant  the 
writer  learned  that  they  were  cut  down  six  or 
seven  years  ago. 

A  house  of  red  brick,  three  stories  high,  with 
a  stoop  of  some  ten  steps,  and  long,  French  win- 
dows on  the  first  floor,  in  "that  red  gash  of 
crosstown  brick"— West  Tenth  Street— that  was 
the  setting  for  the  greater  part  of  James  Oppen- 
heim's  The  Nine-Tenths,  the  story  of  a  news- 
paper for  the  uplifting  of  the  masses.  West 
Tenth  Street  has  always  been  a  favourite  ave- 
nue of  invasion  for  the  novelist  entering  Green- 
wich Village,  and  at  that  curious  corner  where 


OF  THE  NOVELISTS  159 

West  Tenth  and  West  Fourth  Streets  cross  each 
other  at  right  angles  he  is  almost  certain  to  stop 
and  point  out  a  paradox.  Also  in  Greenwich 
Village  he  invariably  contrasts  the  chaste  re- 
spectability, the  general  air  of  detachment  and 
hushed  life  of  the  other  days  with  the  slovenli- 
ness and  dust,  the  squalid  poverty  of  the  pres- 
ent. To  the  Village  Oppenheim  ?s  '  *  Joe ' '  Elaine 
went  with  the  purpose  of  making  a  neighbour- 
hood out  of  a  chaos,  of  organising  the  jumble 
of  scattered,  polyglot  lives.  It  was  a  new  world 
to  him.  "So  the  whole  city  was  but  a  conglom- 
eration of  nests  of  worlds,  woven  together  by 
a  few  needs  and  the  day's  work,  worlds  as  yet 
undiscovered  in  every  direction,  huge  tracts  of 
peoples  of  all  races  leading  strange  and  unas- 
similated  lives/' 


CHAPTER  VIII 

From  Poe  to  Porter — Abingdon  Square — Varick  Street 
—Sheridan  Park— The  Wall  of  "The  Last  Leaf." 

IT  is  a  far  cry  from  ' '  The  Fall  of  the  House  of 
Usher ' '  to  the  twisted  streets  of  Greenwich  Vil- 
lage as  they  are  reflected  in  the  pages  of  the 
novelists  of  the  last  decade  and  a  half.  Yet,  in 
passing,  it  may  again  be  recorded  that  at  the 
very  gateway  by  which  the  village  is  entered,  in 
Sixth  Avenue  close  by  Waverly  Place,  Edgar 
Allan  Poe  once  lived,  and  there  wrote  that  ex- 
traordinary tale.  Also,  that  at  another  time, 
when  he  was  in  his  twenty-eighth  year,  he  in- 
habited, with  Virginia,  his  child  wife,  a  modest 
wooden  house  that  was  numbered  113  Carmine 
Street.  It  was  within  a  few  steps  of  the  grave- 
yard of  St.  John's,  and  in  the  year  1837  Poe 
had  a  habit  of  wandering  through  the  quiet, 
restful  place.  A  quiet,  restful  place  no  more. 
But  even  more  quiet  and  restful  than  it  was  in 
the  fourth  decade  of  the  last  century  it  was 
when  Thomas  Payne  inhabited  it.  Then  the 

160 


NEW  YOEK  OF  THE  NOVELISTS     161 

Village  of  Greenwich  lay  far  beyond  the  city, 
separated  from  it  in  the  summer  by  a  mile  of 
marshy  and  untilled  land,  in  winter  by  a  dreary 


COSMOPOLITAN     NEW    YORK. 
SLUM 


A     LONDON 


waste  with  a  single  road  leading  across  a  snow- 
bound way. 

But  the  century  and  more  that  separates  us 
from  the  Greenwich  Village  of  Tom  Payne 
seems  not  a  whit  longer  than  the  twenty  years 


162  THE  NEW  YOEK 

of  0.  Henry's  "The  Thing's  the  Play,"  a  tale 
which  revolves  about  a  house  near  Abingdon 
Square.  "On  the  ground  floor  there  has  been 
for  twenty-five  years  a  little  store  where  toys 
and  notions  and  stationery  are  sold."  One 
night  twenty  years  ago  there  was  a  wedding  in 
the  rooms  above  the  store.  The  Widow  Mayo 
owned  the  house  and  store.  Her  daughter 
Helen  was  married  to  Frank  Barrie.  John  De- 
laney  was  best  man.  The  ceremony  was  fol- 
lowed by  a  misunderstood  situation,  which  sent 
both  men  out  somewhere  into  the  unknown  and 
left  the  bride  of  a  moment  alone  with  her  twenty 
solitary  years.  There  are  plenty  of  houses 
near  Abingdon  Square  where  on  the  ground 
floor  toys  and  notions  and  stationery  are  sold, 
but  the  writer  confesses  that  he  has  been  able 
to  find  none  which  seems  exactly  suited  to  the 
setting  of  the  tale.  Nearby  is  Varick  Street, 
which  plays  a  part  in  the  same  author's 
*  *  The  Unknown  Quantity. "  "  Bagged,  poverty- 
haunted  Varick  Street,"  0.  Henry  called  it. 
There  was  the  bakery  of  Thomas  Boyne,  and 
there,  in  a  squalid  brick  tenement,  Dan  Kin- 
solving,  in  company  with  Kenwitz,  found  the 


OF  THE  NOVELISTS  163 

daughter  of  the  man  his  father  had  ruined. 
There,  too, — in  the  red  brick  district, — was 
"The  Furnished  Boom,"  probably  the  most  pa- 
thetic of  all  the  stories  that  0.  Henry  penned, — 
the  young  man  invading  the  great  city  in  a 
search  for  his  lost  love,  sensing  her  presence  in 
the  room  that  the  landlady  has  shown,  detecting 
the  faint  odour  of  mignonette. 

To  the  end  shy  and  almost  suspicious  of  the 
stranger  who  was  not  the  casual  stranger,  the 
acquaintance  scraped  in  a  mood  on  a  bench  in 
Madison  Square,  or  Sheridan  Park,  or  at  some 
corner  of  "that  thoroughfare  which  parallels 
and  parodies  Broadway,"  Sidney  Porter  was, 
of  all  men,  one  of  the  most  difficult  of  approach. 
There  was  a  little  circle  of  his  intimates,  con- 
sisting of  such  men  as  Eichard  Duffy,  Gilman 
Hall,  Kobert  H.  Davis,  H.  Peyton  Steger,  Bob- 
ert  Eudd  Whiting  and  a  few  more,  to  whom  he 
was  accessible  at  any  time  of  the  night  or  day. 
But  even  these  men  knew  that  it  was  out  of  the 
question  to  arrange  formally  a  meeting  between 
0.  Henry  and  some  one  who  wanted  to  know 
him ;  knew  that  at  the  first  hint  the  quarry  would 
take  fright  and  disappear.  So  the  encounter 


164  THE  NEW  YORK 

had  to  have  every  appearance  of  mere  chance. 
Into  Porter's  rooms  on  Irving  Place  the  friend 
would  drop,  apparently  for  a  word  or  two  of 
business.  With  him  there  would  be  a  stranger, 
whom  the  friend  had  chanced  to  pick  up  on  the 
way.  Nine  times  out  of  ten  the  friend  would 
not  introduce  the  other  two.  But  after  a  few 
minutes'  talk,  and  in  response  to  a  prearranged 
signal,  the  stranger  would  remark  that  he  had 
stumbled  on  a  joint  near  the  Bowery,  or  on 
upper  Broadway  where  there  was  a  cocktail 
mixer  who  had  tended  bar  in  forty-seven  cities 
of  the  United  States.  Before  he  had  finished 
Porter  had  reached  for  his  hat.  The  friend  was 
forgotten,  and  arm  in  arm  stranger  and  story- 
spinner  sallied  forth  into  the  night. 

The  bait  thrown  out  was  not  always  a  cock- 
tail mixer  and  his  experiences.  "The  most 
picturesque  bit  of  rear  tenement  that  remains 
in  New  York. ' '  "  That  was  the  hint  that  I  used 
when  the  nod  came"  one  man  who  had  found 
0.  Henry  in  the  way  suggested  told  the  writer. 
"And  in  three  minutes  we  were  in  the  street. 
I  led  him  down  Irving  Place  to  Fourteenth,  to 
Sixth  Avenue,  past  the  Jefferson  Market  Police 


OF  THE  NOVELISTS  165 

Court,  into  Greenwich  Village,  past  Sheridan 
Park,  and  down  Grove  Street  to  the  very  end. 
There,  between  the  front  houses,  Nos.  10  and  12, 
there  is  an  opening.  Beyond  the  opening  is  a 
triangle,  in  the  middle  of  which  is  a  tall  tele- 
graph pole,  and  at  the  back  there  are  three 
three-story  brick  houses,  the  front  windows  of 
which  look  out  diagonally  at  a  wall  on  which 
leaves  are  growing.  'There  is  a  story  there,' 
said  Porter,  'a  story  that  suggests  an  episode 
in  Murger's  Vie  de  Boheme,  where  the  grisette, 
at  night,  waters  the  flowers  to  keep  them  alive. 
The  lifetime  of  the  flowers,  you  remember,  was 
to  be  the  lifetime  of  that  transient  love.'  He 
wrote  that  story,  I  am  sure,  in  'The  Last  Leaf,' 
and  when  I  see  that  bare,  dreary  yard,  and  the 
blank  wall  of  the  house  twenty  feet  away,  and 
the  old  ivy  vine,  I  recall  the  pathetic  tale  of 
Sue  and  Joanna  and  the  masterpiece  that  old 
Behrman  painted  at  the  cost  of  his  life." 


CHAPTER  IX 

The  Trail  of  "Max  Fargus"—  The  House  of  the  Tin  Sailor 
—Shysters'  Row—  A  Mythical  Part  of  Irving  Place—  The 
Course  of  Empire  —  68  Clinton  Place. 

NINE  or  ten  years  ago,  when  the  mood  of 
Honore  de  Balzac  was  strong  upon  him,  Owen 
Johnson  wrote  Max  Fargus,  a  novel  which 
made  no  marked  stir,  which  was  not  the 
most  cheerful  reading,  but  which,  by  virtue  of 
its  grim  power  and  straightforwardness  of  nar- 
rative, has  won  a  place  on  that  shelf  made  up 
of  the  books  which  are  never  very  widely  read, 
but  are  never  quite  forgotten.  Above  all  it  is 
of  importance  in  this  book  because  it  was  New 
York  as  not  one  novel  of  a  thousand  is  New 
York.  It  was  the  expression  of  a  period  in  the 
author's  development  when  his  writing  hand 
was  moving  in  the  sweeping  shadow  of  Ccesar 
Birotteau,  and  the  second  part  of  Lost  Illusions, 
and  the  brief  but  unforgettable  Gobseck.  Bal- 
zac had  searched  Paris  frantically  until  he  had 
found  the  name  "Z.  Mareas."  Owen  Johnson 


NEW  YORK  OF  THE  NOVELISTS     167 


prowled  doggedly  about  New  York  until  he  had 
found  a  definite  setting  of  the  scene  for  every 
episode  of  Max  Fargus.  A  mere  street  or 
neighbourhood  was  not  enough.  In  that  street 


i 


THE  JEFFERSON  MARKET  POLICE 
COURT.  OWEN  JOHNSON'S 
"MAX  FARGUS" 

or  neighbourhood  there  had  to  be  the  right 
house.  That  house  had  to  have  the  proper  age 
and  architecture.  The  tale  opened  in  the 
" House  of  the  Tin  Sailor"  on  one  of  the  side 


168  THE  NEW  YOEK 

streets  east  of  Second  Avenue  near  Stuyvesant 
Square.  "A  third  of  the  way  down  the  block, 
on  the  north  side,  there  projected  above  a  door- 
way the  figure  of  a  tin  sailor,  balancing  two  pad- 
dles which  the  breeze  caused  to  revolve."  The 
house  is  still  there,  but  the  sailor  and  his  pad- 
dle are  gone — were  gone  when  the  author  of 
the  novel  and  the  chronicler  of  these  pages  to- 
gether sought  the  home  of  Sheila  Fargus  one 
day  last  June. 

Even  more  vivid  in  the  matter  of  detail  were 
the  law  offices  of  Bofinger  and  Groll,  the  latter 
character,  by  the  way,  drawn  directly  from  a 
lawyer  known  by  name  to  every  reader  of  a  New 
York  newspaper.  Almost  unchanged  to-day 
these  offices  may  be  found  at  the  gateway  enter- 
ing Greenwich  Village.  Go  down  to  the  Jeffer- 
son Market  Police  Court,  the  tall  tower  of 
which,  in  the  bygone  days,  used  so  to  perturb 
the  soul  of  the  old  darkey  Chad  of  F.  Hopkinson 
Smith's  Colonel  Carter  of  Carter  sville.  Con- 
fronting the  barred  windows  of  the  prison  an- 
nex, from  Sixth  to  Seventh  Avenues,  runs  a 
short  row  of  dingy,  undersized  houses,  given 
over  to  the  lawyers  who  practise  in  and  about 


OF  THE  NOVELISTS  169 

the  Court.  Ten  years  ago  the  lawyers  were 
forced  to  dispute  their  foothold  with  half  a 
dozen  small  shops.  The  shops  have  dwindled, 
but  the  lawyers  still  hold  their  own  and  batten 
upon  the  unfortunate.  In  the  row  the  offices  of 
Hyman  Groll  and  Alonzo  Bofinger  were  the 
most  pretentious  and  immaculate.  The  glass 
front  sparkled.  The  gilt  announcement  ar- 
rested the  eye.  There  Groll  spun  his  webs,  and 
Bofinger  builded  cunningly  but  to  his  own  ulti- 
mate undoing. 

From  West  Tenth  Street  the  trail  of  Max 
Fargus  led  down  to  Washington  Square,  for  it 
was  on  a  bench  at  the  northeast  corner  of  that 
Square  that  Max  Fargus  was  to  meet  Sheila 
Vaughn.  Bofinger,  hot  upon  the  scent,  dodged 
southward  from  his  office  amid  the  filth  of  Sixth 
Avenue.  "The  Square  suddenly  discovered  it- 
self, that  smiling  barrier  which  interposes  itself 
between  the  horrors  of  Third  Street  and  the 
thoughtless  royal  avenue  which  digs  its  roots 
here  and  stretches  upward  to  flower  like  a  royal 
palm  in  the  luxuriance  of  Central  Park."  At 
the  period  of  the  story  the  Square  had  not  yet 
fallen  before  the  vandal  march  of  business, 


170  THE  NEW  YOEK 

though  already  the  invaders  showed  their  men- 
acing front  above  the  roofs.  From  the  Square 
the  lawyer  trailed  Sheila  to  her  home;  first 
northward  along  the  avenue,  then  eastward  on 
Twelfth  Street.  At  this  point  Mr.  Johnson  was 
guilty  of  a  most  astonishing  blunder.  He 
speaks  of  the  pursuit  leading  from  Twelfth 
Street  north  along  Irving  Place  to  Fourteenth 
Street.  Of  course  Irving  Place  does  not  run 
below  the  northern  side  of  Fourteenth  Street. 
The  trail  beyond  that  point  led  westward  to 
Sixth  Avenue,  northward  a  dozen  blocks,  then 
westward  again,  until  the  woman,  thinking  she 
had  shaken  off  any  possible  inquisitive  follower, 
entered  the  boarding-house  for  improvident  ac- 
tors near  Seventh  Avenue.  Bofinger  had  found 
out  what  he  wanted  to  know. 

Edgar  Fawcett,  in  the  story  of  A  New  York 
Family,  pointed  out  the  significant  fact  that  all 
the  great  capitals  of  history,  after  many  hesi- 
tant swerves  and  recoils,  have  taken  a  steadfast 
western  course.  This  feature,  however,  is 
probably  less  true  of  our  own  than  of  any  other 
metropolis  of  modern  times.  Chelsea  and 
Greenwich  Village  were  thriving  populated 


OF  THE  NOVELISTS 


171 


communities  when  the  eastern  portion  of  the 
city  of  the  same  latitude  was  farm  and  swamp 
land.  Mr.  Fawcett's  work  was  an  excellent 


ON  FOURTEENTH  STREET,  VERY  NEARLY  OPPOSITE  THE 
SOUTHERN  END  OF  IRVING  PLACE,  IS  A  RESTAU- 
RANT NOTED  FOR  ITS  MUSIC  AND  ITS  BEER.  IT  HAS 
APPEARED  SEVERAL  TIMES  IN  THE  FICTION  DEAL- 
ING WITH  NEW  YORK  LIFE.  FOR  EXAMPLE,  FRAN- 
CES HODGSON  BURNETT  USED  IT  IN  "THE  SHUTTLE," 
THAT  VERY  WIDELY  READ  NOVEL  OF  INTERNATIONAL 
MARRIAGE  OF  SEVEN  OR  EIGHT  YEARS  AGO.  THERE 
THE  IRREPRESSIBLE  G.  SELDEN,  WHOSE  AMERICAN 
SLANG  HAD  SO  ASTONISHED  AND  PUZZLED  ENGLISH- 
MEN, DINED  IN  STATE  WITH  HIS  CRONIES  AFTEB 
THE  EUROPEAN  TRIP  WHICH  STARTED  HIM  ON  THE 
ROAD  TO  COMMERCIAL  SUCCESS 

illustration  of  the  element  that  has  been  so  often 
lacking  in  the  local  colour  of  the  New  York  of 
fiction.  He  was  strenuous,  indomitably  per- 


172  THE  NEW  YORK 

sistent,  undoubtedly  sincere.  His  descriptions 
were  apparently  laboriously  and  conscientiously 
wrought.  But  they  were  too  often  unconvinc- 
ing. Much  is  to  be  said  of  his  treatment  of 
quaint  corners  of  suburban  New  York,  of 
Brooklyn,  of  Greenpoint,  of  Hoboken.  One  of 
the  houses  of  the  picturesque  Colonnade  Eow  in 
Lafayette  Place  was  the  home  of  Mrs.  Eussell 
Leroy,  described  in  A  Hopeless  Case.  The  old 
church  at  the  southern  end  of  Lafayette  Place 
mentioned  in  the  novel  was  St.  Bartholomew's. 
The  dwelling  houses  on  the  east  side  of  the 
street  disappeared  years  ago.  Moving  west- 
ward again,  passing  Grace  Church,  which  Mr. 
Fawcett  described  as  "looming  up  a  tall  and 
stately  sentinel  at  the  upper  end  of  Broadway," 
and  the  St.  Denis  Hotel,  where  Basil  and  Isabel 
March  (W.  D.  Ho  wells 's  A  Hazard  of  New 
Fortunes)  stayed  during  their  invasions  of  New 
York,  we  find  in  West  Tenth  Street,  between 
Fifth  and  Sixth  Avenues,  the  home  of  Spencer 
Delaplaine,  the  husband  of  Olivia  Delaplaine  in 
Mr.  Fawcett 's  novel  of  that  name.  Two  blocks 
away,  at  the  Brevoort,  lived  Clinton  Wain- 
wright,  Mr.  Fawcett's  "Gentleman  of  Leisure." 


OF  THE  NOVELISTS  173 

One  of  Mr.  Fawcett's  most  vigorous  descrip- 
tions occurred  where,  in  this  book,  he  contrasted 
lower  Fifth  Avenue  and  Madison  Square.  Di- 
rectly across  the  street  from  the  Brevoort,  on 
the  east  side  of  the  avenue,  is  No.  68  Clinton 
Place,  interesting  as  being  not  only  the  scene, 
but  the  raison  d'etre,  of  Thomas  Janvier's  A 
Temporary  Deadlock.  In  one  of  the  Fifth  Ave- 
nue houses  near  here  lived  the  Huntingdons  of 
Edgar  Fawcett's  A  Hopeless  Case. 


CHAPTER  X 

Crawford's  New  York-— Old  Second  Avenue— Tompkins 
Square— The  House  of  "The  Last  Meeting"— Colonel  Car- 
ter's Home. 

F.  MARION  CKAWFORD  belonged  to  a  race  of 
novelists — a  race  whose  influence  seems  to  be 
dominating  the  lighter  literature  of  the  early 
half  of  the  twentieth  century — who  are  untram- 
melled by  circumstance  of  mere  creed  or  speech ; 
who  turn  to  their  work  with  a  recognition  of  the 
great  fundamental  principle  that  human  nature 
is  everywhere  pretty  much  the  same ;  that  love, 
hatred,  avarice,  jealousy,  make  romance  equally 
in  Madagascar  and  Maine.  The  story-tellers  of 
the  seventeenth  and  eighteenth  centuries  wrote 
of  soils  other  than  their  own  for  the  purpose  of 
giving  their  extravagances  the  appearance  of 
reality  and  verisimilitude.  They  sat  down  to 
their  writing  tables  in  much  the  same  spirit  as 
Tartarin  started  for  Algiers.  The  Spain  of  Le 
Sage  and  Beaumarchais  was  as  strange,  as  de- 
lightful, and  as  unreal  as  the  country  of  the 

174 


NEW  YORK  OF  THE  NOVELISTS     175 

Lilliputians  or  the  Brobdingnagians.  Thack- 
eray in  all  his  more  important  stories  took  his 
men  and  women  at  some  time  in  the  narrative 
to  Paris  or  Weimar  or  Eome,  but  it  was  to  the 
British  society  of  these  places  that  he  intro- 
duced us — a  society  which  carried  with  it  its 
usages,  its  prejudices — its  Lares  and  Penates. 
Among  the  story  spinners  of  our  day  Mr.  Davis, 
invading  the  shores  of  the  Mediterranean  and 
imaginary  South  American  republics  for  local 
colour,  had  to  take  with  him  a  few  men  and 
women  out  of  Mr.  Gibson's  sketch  book  to  estab- 
lish himself  soundly;  and  Mr.  Anthony  Hope 
needed  an  Englishman  to  carry  him  through 
Euritania.  Even  Mr.  Kipling,  so  persistently 
hailed  as  the  trumpeter  of  world-wide  litera- 
ture, has  confined  himself  almost  entirely  to 
English-speaking  people.  His  tales  of  native 
life  are  exotic.  Mr.  Crawford  was  more  typi- 
cally the  pioneer.  So  distinctly  was  he  a  cos- 
mopolitan, that  his  New  York  stories  in  no  way 
compared  with  the  splendid  Saracinesca  series ; 
in  the  former  he  failed  to  make  us  feel  the  vast- 
ness,  the  complexity  of  the  metropolitan  life 
that  was  behind  his  men  and  women.  In  find- 


176  THE  NEW  YOEK 

ing  a  home  for  the  Lauderdales,  Mr.  Crawford 
obviously  made  use  of  the  vine-covered  resi- 
dence of  Mr.  Eichard  Watson  Gilder,  to  which 
he  had  been  a  frequent  visitor,  on  the  north 
side  of  Clinton  Place,  a  few  doors  east  of  Fifth 
Avenue.    He    spoke    of    Clinton    Place   never 
having  been  a   fashionable   thoroughfare,   al- 
though it  once  lay  in  a  fashionable  neighbour- 
hood.   Farther  east  on  Clinton  Place,  in  "an 
odd,   old  structure  tenanted  by  Bohemians," 
lived   Paul   Hathaway    (The   Midge).    Again 
taking  up  Mr.  Crawford's  New  York,  the  sec- 
ond  house   of   old   Colonnade   Eow,   opposite 
where  the  Astor  Library  used  to  be,  was  the 
home  of  Walter  Crowdie  and  his  wife  Hester. 
A  little  garden,  surrounded  by  an  iron  railing, 
separated  the  house  from  the  street.    These 
white  houses,  with  their  tall  pillars  and  deep 
balconies,  were  among  the  most  interesting  and 
picturesque    relics    of    the    older    New    York. 
John  Ealston  and  Katharine  Lauderdale,  on 
their  spring  day  walk  strolled  up  Stuyvesant 
Street  and  passed  St.  Mark's  Church  and  on 
to  Tompkins  Square,  with  its  broad  walks  and 
hordes   of   screaming  children — Julian  Ealph 


OF  THE  NOVELISTS  177 

wrote  of  these  in  People  We  Pass — and  beyond 
across  the  lettered  avenues  to  the  timber  yard 
at  the  water's  edge.  On  Avenue  B  was  the 
canary  bird  shop  of  Andreas  Stoifel,  of  Mr. 
Janvier's  An  Idyll  of  the  East  Side. 

Claire  Twining,  in  Edgar  Fawcett's  An  Am- 
bitious Woman,  noted  the  "wide,  airy  expanse 
of  the  Square  lighted  with  innumerable  lamps" 
on  her  wild  flight  from  Slocumb  after  the  out- 
break of  fire  in  Niblo's  Theatre.  In  that  story 
Mr.  Fawcett  referred  to  the  time  when  Tomp- 
kins  Square  was  a  "dark  horror  to  all  decent 
citizens  living  near  it."  By  day  set  aside  as 
a  parade  ground  for  the  city  militia,  which 
paraded  there  scarcely  twice  a  year,  its  lamp- 
less  lapse  of  earth  was  by  night  at  least  four 
acres  of  brooding  gloom,  and  he  who  ventured 
to  cross  it  stood  the  risk  of  thieving  assault,  if 
nothing  more  harmful. 

The  Grosvenors  lived  in  a  big,  dingy  mansion 
on  Second  Avenue,  near  Stuyvesant  and  Ruth- 
erford Squares,  which  neighbourhood  Mr.  Faw- 
cett characterised  as  "one  of  the  few  frag- 
ments that  have  been  left  uninvaded  by  the 
merciless  spirit  of  change."  Near  by,  in  a 


178  THE  NEW  YOEK 

little  red  brick  house,  dwelt  Mrs.  Montgomery, 
of  Henry  James's  Washington  Square;  and 
Bunner  told  us  how  at  night  the  strong  wind 
used  to  blow  the  music  of  St.  George  's  bells  half 
across  the  city  to  the  Midge's  ears.  "It  was 
as  though  Stuyvesant  Square  snugly  locked  up 
for  the  night  sent  a  midnight  message  of  re- 
proach to  the  broader  and  more  democratic 
ground,  whose  hard  walks  knew  no  rest  from 
echoing  footsteps  in  light  or  dark."  Farther 
down,  near  the  avenue's  southern  extremity, 
on  the  northwest  corner  of  Second  Street  was 
the  large,  red  brick  house  where  Ernest  Neu- 
man  went  to  live  under  an  assumed  name  after 
his  release  from  the  Tombs  Prison,  where  he 
had  been  on  trial  for  the  murder  of  his  be- 
trothed, as  described  in  Henry  Harland's  As 
It  Was  Written.  The  Karons  of  the  same 
writer's  Mrs.  Peixada  lived  between  Sixth  and 
Seventh  Streets,  and  across  the  way  was  the 
pawnshop  of  Bernard  Peixada,  "a  brick  house, 
although  the  bricks  were  concealed  by  a  coat 
of  dark  grey  stucco  that  blotches  here  and  there 
had  made  almost  black."  The  pawnbroking 
establishment  was  on  the  ground  floor,  and  the 


OF  THE  NOVELISTS  179 

broad  windows  in  front  were  protected,  like 
those  of  a  jail,  by  heavy  iron  bars.  In  these 
windows  were  musical  instruments,  household 
ornaments,  kitchen  utensils,  firearms,  tarnished 
uniforms,  women's  faded  gewgaws  and  finery, 
and  behind  these,  darkness,  mystery  and  gloom. 
The  three  upper  stories  were  hermetically 
sealed  and  wore  a  sinister  and  ill-omened 
aspect.  There  has  not  been  for  years  a  struc- 
ture in  the  neighbourhood  even  remotely  sug- 
gestive of  this  shop. 

At  the  corner  of  Eighteenth  Street  and  Fifth 
Avenue  was  the  house  of  Uncle  Larry  Laugh- 
ton  (Brander  Matthews 's  The  Last  Meeting), 
where  the  Full  Score  Club  met  the  evening  that 
Frederick  Olyphant  was  "  shanghaied "  by  the 
man  with  the  Black  Heart.  The  original  of 
Laurence  Laughton  was  Laurence  Button,  and 
the  house  in  question  was  the  home  of  Pro- 
fessor Matthews 's  father.  The  scene  of  the 
dinner  in  The  Last  Meeting  was  the  library,  to 
which  was  transferred,  for  the  purposes  of  the 
story,  Laurence  Button's  famous  collection  of 
death  masks. 

The  quarters  occupied  by  Colonel  Carter  of 


180 


THE  NEW  YOEK 


Cartersville  during  that  period  of  his  life  when 
he  was  in  New  York  trying  to  interest  the 


^ss^m^' 


THE  HOME  F.  HOPKINSON  SMITH  FOUND  FOB  COLONEL  CARTER 

agents  of  English  syndicates  in  the  railroad 
scheme,  the  consummation  of  which  would  have 


OF  THE  NOVELISTS  181 

given  many  of  the  very  first  Virginian  families 
easy  access  to  the  Atlantic  Coast,  were  de- 
scribed by  F.  Hopkinson  Smith  as  being  in  "an 
old-fashioned,  partly  furnished,  two-story  house, 
nearly  a  century  old,  which  crouched  down 
behind  the  larger  and  more  modern  dwelling 
fronting  on  the  street,"  designated  in  the  book 
as  Bedford  Place.  The  spot  was  within  a 
stone's  throw  of  the  tall  clock  tower  of  the  Jef- 
ferson Market.  The  street  entrance  to  this 
curious  abode  was  marked  by  a  swinging 
wooden,  gate,  opening  into  a  narrow  tunnel, 
which  dodged  under  the  front  house.  "It  was 
an  uncanny  sort  of  passageway,  mouldy  and 
wet  from  a  long  neglected  leak  overhead,  and 
lighted  at  night  by  a  rusty  lantern  with  dingy 
glass  sides. "  Bedford  Place  was  West  Tenth 
Street,  and  over  the  swinging  wooden  gate  was 
the  number— "58i/2."  When  the  Tile  Club  of 
glorious  memory  flourished,  and  made  merry 
ashore  and  afloat,  this  quaint  bit  of  local  colour 
existed  in  its  entirety.  Most  of  it,  however, 
was  destroyed  when  Mr.  Maitland  Armstrong, 
the  owner  of  the  front  house,  No.  58  West 
Tenth  Street,  remodelled  his  own  residence. 


A  SHBINE  OF  YESTERDAY.  THE  OLD  PASSAGE  LEADING  FROM 
THE  STREET  TO  THE  FRAME  STRUCTURE  IN  THE  REAR  IN 
WHICH  THE  TILE  CLUB  HAD  ITS  HEADQUARTERS,  AND 
IN  WHICH  THE  LATE  F.  HOPKINSON  SMITH,  BY  WHOM 
THE  ABOVE  SKETCH  WAS  DRAWN,  FOUND  A  NEW  YORK 
HOME  FOB  COLONEL  GEORGE  FAIRFAX  CARTER  OF  CAR- 
TERSVILLE,  FAIRFAX  COUNTY,  VIRGINIA.  IN  THIS  TUN- 
NEL THE  COLONEL  ENGAGED  IN  PISTOL  PRACTICE  IN 
PREPARATION  FOR  THE  EXPECTED  DUEL  WITH  THE 
BROKER,  KLUTCHEM,  WHO  HAD  SPOKEN  IN  TERMS  OF 
DISPARAGEMENT  OF  THE  PROPOSED  AIR  LINE  RAILWAY 
THAT  WAS  TO  GIVE  SOME  OF  THE  VERY  FIRST  FAMILIES 
OF  VIRGINIA  EASY  ACCESS  TO  THE  ATLANTIC  SEABOARD, 
THE  PASSAGE,  BEARING  THE  NUMBER  58  M>,  WAS  ON  THE 
SOUTH  SIDE  OF  WEST  TENTH  STREET  ABOUT  ONE  HUN- 
DRED YARDS  EAST  OF  SIXTH  AVENUE  AND  ALMOST 
DIRECTLY  OPPOSITE  THE  OLD  STUDIO  BUILDING.  IT 
DISAPPEARED  SOME  TWENTY  YEARS  AGO  WHEN  THE 
FRONT  BUILDING,  NUMBER  58,  WAS  REMODELLED 

182 


NEW  YOEK  OF  THE  NOVELISTS     183 

The  entrance  and  the  eastern  half  of  the  white 
frame  structure  in  the  rear,  where  the  Colonel 
had  his  home,  remain  intact.  The  swinging 
wooden  gate  whence  "Chad"  swooped  down 
upon  the  complacent  shopkeepers  of  the  quar- 
ter was  for  years  a  familiar  landmark  of  the 
neighbourhood.  It  opened  into  the  tunnel 
directly  under  the  stoop  of  No.  58  as  it  exists 
to-day.  To  the  west  of  the  gate  the  steps 
curved  up  to  the  door  of  the  front  house. 
Peering  through  the  iron  gate  in  front,  one  may 
see  part  of  the  dark,  uncanny  tunnel  where 
the  Colonel  indulged  in  pistol  practice  prepara- 
tory to  his  expected  meeting  with  the  broker 
Klutchem.  The  garden  where  Fitz  and  the 
Major  took  refuge  while  "Chad"  held  the 
lighted  candle  as  a  mark  for  Carter's  skill  was 
then  between  the  two  houses.  Few  traces  of 
it  remain,  for  the  extension  built  in  the  rear 
of  No.  58  covers  the  greater  part  of  the  ground. 
Those  who  witnessed  the  stage  presentation  of 
Colonel  Carter  of  Cartersville  will  doubtless  re- 
member that  the  scene  of  one  act  was  laid  in  the 
Colonel's  dining-room.  When  the  play  was  in 
preparation  Mr.  Smith  piloted  the  scenic  artist 


184     NEW  YOEK  OF  THE  NOVELISTS 

through  the  old  building,  with  the  result  that  the 
long  room  made  familiar  to  theatregoers  as  the 
scene  of  the  Virginian  Don  Quixote's  exploits 
was  an  exact  reproduction  of  the  original  cham- 
ber. In  the  rear  may  be  found  the  little  door 
opening  into  the  hall  and  the  fourteen  little 
white  wooden  steps  by  which  Carter  and  his 
friends  mounted  to  the  upper  story  of  the  struc- 
ture, where  from  one  of  the  west  windows 
"Chad,"  looking  out  into  the  night,  saw  the  tall, 
illuminated  tower  of  "de  jail"  looming  up  omi- 
nous and  mysterious.  A  few  hundred  yards 
away,  on  Sixth  Avenue,  was  the  cellar  saloon 
patronised  by  Carter  and  his  Virginian  friends. 
Mr.  Smith  recognised  three  dominant  types  in 
American  life.  From  Colonel  Carter  of  Car- 
tersville,  in  which  he  attempted  to  portray  the 
old  Southern  chivalry  so  rapidly  passing  away, 
he  passed  in  Tom  Grogan  to  the  study  of  the 
ubiquitous  Irish-American  type.  Caleb  West 
completed  the  trilogy  with  a  picture  of  the 
sturdy  life  sprung  from  the  New  England  soil. 


PART  IV 

THE  HEART  OP  NEW  ARABIA 


CHAPTEE  I 

The  Outstanding  Figures — Robert  Burns's  Ayrshire — The 
France  of  "Quentin  Durward" — What  California  Meant  to 
Kipling — Thunder  in  the  Catskills. 

THE  American  traveller  to — let  us  say — the 
counties  of  Ayrshire  and  Dumfrieshire,  North 
Britain,  may  or  may  not  find  there  the  impres- 
sion of  the  Scotland  that  was.  That  is  some- 
thing which  depends  entirely  upon  the  indi- 
vidual. To  one  the  air  will  be  "full  of  ballad 
notes,  borne  out  of  long  ago."  He  will  men- 
tally have  reconstructed  the  old  Eoman  wall 
which  protected  ancient  Britain  from  the  dep- 
redations of  Pict  and  Scot.  He  will  have  had 
a  vision  of  the  Centurion  watching  on  the  ram- 
parts outlined  against  the  sky.  He  will  have 
seen  the  Legions  in  camp.  Winding  stream 
and  stately  hill  will  suggest  the  old  clan  feuds. 
The  border  will  bring  to  him  with  a  particular 
vividness  all  the  history  of  two  thousand  years. 
Another  will  not  venture  far  afield,  preferring 
to  peruse  ten  days  old  American  newspapers  in 

187 


188  THE  NEW  YOEK 

the  seclusion  of  the  reading  room  of  the  King's 
Arms  in  the  High  Street  of  Ayr.  But  let  his 
weariness  be  ever  so  great,  his  longing  for  the 
sight  of  the  Glasgow  boat  that  is  to  bear  him 
homeward  ever  so  keen,  he  cannot  evade  the 
imprint  that  has  been  left  on  town,  street,  and 
country  lane  by  the  men  and  women  of  the  verse 
of  Eobert  Burns.  If,  in  the  most  prosaic  spirit 
in  the  world,  he  ventures  forth  to  purchase  cer- 
tain trifles  of  wearing  apparel,  his  steps  almost 
certainly  will  lead  past  the  tavern  of  Tarn 
o'  Shanter.  Two  or  three  miles  to  the  south 
stands  Alloway  Kirk,  and  beyond  the  "  banks 
and  braes  o'  Bonny  Doon."  Ten  miles  east- 
ward is  Mauchline,  with  its  Poosie  Nancy's 
Tavern  of  the  Jolly  Beggars.  It  matters  not  if 
the  soul  be  attuned  to  nothing  other  than  stocks 
or  soap.  He  may  succeed  in  ignoring  all  the 
history  of  the  land,  but  he  cannot  escape  taking 
away  with  him  something  of  the  impression 
that  Burns  left  on  the  country  and  people  of 
whom  he  sang.  To  the  end  of  his  days  that 
American  will  retain  something  of  Highland 
Mary,  and  "The  Cotter's  Saturday  Night"  and 
Bonny  Jean,  who  was  not  so  bonny  after  all, 


OF  THE  NOVELISTS  189 

and  the  strange  ride  of  Tarn  o'  Shanter,  and 
"a  man's  a  man  for  a'  that." 

Formal  history  is  easily  forgotten:  that  his- 
tory which  soaks  into  the  mind  through  its 
association  with  the  famous  characters  of  fic- 
tion or  verse  is  not.  Most  of  us  have  read 
something  of  the  condition  of  England  after  the 
Norman  Conquest  and  of  that  France  which 
crafty  Louis  XI  welded  into  a  nation.  But 
most  of  us,  if  quite  honest,  would  be  ready  to 
confess  that  the  impressions  that  have  endured 
are  those  which  have  come  to  us  through  the 
pages  of  Ivanhoe  and  of  Quentin  Durward.  It 
is  with  the  eyes  of  Wamba  the  Jester  that  we 
have  seen  most  keenly  the  pageantry  of  the 
lists  of  Ashby  de  la  Zouche  and  the  burly  figure 
of  Richard  of  the  Lion  Heart ;  with  the  eyes  of 
the  young  Scottish  archer  that  we  have  seen 
the  horrors  of  the  Castle  of  Loches  and  the 
cunning  and  superstition  of  Louis.  One  hun- 
dred works  by  learned  historians  could  give  no 
more  graphic  picture  of  the  life  of  the  Europe 
of  the  middle  ages  than  that  which  Charles 
Reade  flung  before  his  readers  in  The  Cloister 
and  the  Hearth.  Though  he  played  ducks  and 


190  THE  NEW  YOEK 

drakes  with  history,  where  can  a  more  vivid 
and  lasting  impression  of  the  Paris  of  the  Va- 
lois  kings,  of  Louis  XIII,  and  the  Wars  of  the 
Fronde  be  derived  than  from  the  pages  of  the 
genial  Dumas?  If  Thackeray  had  continued 
Macaulay's  History  of  England,  and  written  of 
the  age  of  Queen  Anne,  as  he  once  intended  to 
do,  how  many  of  us  would  have  retained  a 
livelier  knowledge  of  that  period  than  those  of 
us  have  retained  who  possess  a  sound  knowl- 
edge of  Henry  Esmond?  Is  the  acquaintance 
of  the  average  American  of  the  last  generation 
or  this  with  the  Bed  Skins  of  the  eighteenth 
century  based  upon  the  volumes  of  Parkman 
or  upon  Fenimore  Cooper's  Leatherstocking 
Tales! 

As  it  is  with  history,  it  is  with  cities  and 
streets.  To  Eudyard  Kipling  at  the  time  of 
his  first  visit  to  the  United  States,  California 
was  not  a  State,  nor  a  people,  nor  a  civilisation. 
It  was  the  background  of  the  stories  of  Bret 
Harte ;  the  scene  of  Eoaring  Camp,  Eed  Gulch, 
and  Sandy  Bar.  Salem  may  have  given  birth 
to  illustrious  men  and  women,  but  in  thinking 
of  it  we  see  first  of  all  the  figures  of  Hester 


OF  THE  NOVELISTS  191 

Prynne  and  Arthur  Dimmesdale.  Go  up  along 
the  Hudson  Eiver  to  Sleepy  Hollow  and  is  not 
your  first  thought  of  Ichabod  Crane  and  the 
headless  horseman?  What  does  the  roll  of 
thunder  in  the  Catskill  Mountains  suggest  more 
quickly  than  the  twenty  years '  sleep  of  Eip  Van 
Winkle,  and  the  ghostly  men  of  Henrik  Hudson 
at  their  game  of  bowls?  You  are  visiting  the 
Charter  House  in  London.  Is  there  one  of  the 
long  generations  of  pensioners  there  who  had 
actual  existence  that  means  nearly  so  much  to 
you  as  Colonel  "Tom"  Newcome,  who  an- 
swered "Adsum"  when  his  name  was  called, 
and  stood  in  the  presence  of  his  Master?  You 
are  visiting,  in  Paris,  the  cemetery  of  the  Pere 
Lachaise.  Whose  tomb  would  you  rather  be 
shown,  that  of  Victor  Hugo's  Jean  Valjean,  if 
it  had  a  tangible  existence,  or  that  of  Bossuet? 
If,  in  happier  days,  you  were  on  your  way  to 
the  Eiviera,  perhaps  to  the  fascinating  wicked- 
ness of  the  gaming  tables  at  Monte  Carlo,  being 
rushed  along  at  eighty  kilometres  an  hour  by 
the  Cote  d'Azur,  and  the  station  lights  showed 
you  the  word  "Tarascon,"  would  not  your  first 
thought  be  of  the  immortal  Tartarin  returning 


192    NEW  YOKK  OF  THE  NOVELISTS 

from  his  Algerian  exploits  followed  by  his 
faithful  camel?  And  as  it  is  with  cities  so  is 
it  with  the  streets  of  cities,  and  when,  perhaps 
a  quarter  of  a  century  hence,  we  shall  have 
a  national  literature  comparable  or  perhaps 
superior  to  the  literature  of  older  lands  we 
shall,  in  New  York,  or  Boston,  or  Philadelphia, 
or  San  Francisco,  or  Chicago,  or  New  Orleans, 
be  able  to  point  to  innumerable  Maison  Vau- 
quers  distinctive  settings  of  the  scene  of  endur- 
ing works  of  fiction.  For  now  and  in  the 
future  as  in  the  past,  the  men  and  women  of 
the  world  of  make-believe  will  stand  out  clearly 
and  vividly,  while  those  who  have  had  actual 
existence  will  seem  somehow  impalpable,  ready 
to  vanish  like  a  mist. 


CHAPTEE  II 

The  Story  of  "The  Bread  Line"— Identifying  the  Char- 
acters—Publication Offices  of  "The  Whole  Family." 

NEW  YORK  's  nightly  bread  line  at  the  corner  of 
Tenth  Street  and  Broadway  has  been  made 
familiar  to  readers  all  over  the  land  in  a  dozen 
stories  by  0.  Henry.  But  the  bread  line  has 
its  individual  novel  some  years  before  William 
Sidney  Porter  found  his  way  out  of  the  south 
and  west  to  the  hospitable  noises  and  odours 
of  Jayville,  near  Tarrytown.  That  was  the 
book  by  Albert  Bigelow  Paine,  who  later  be- 
came the  biographer  of  Mark  Twain.  It  was 
the  story  of  the  attempt  of  four  Bohemians, 
two  writers  and  two  artists,  to  establish  a 
weekly  paper,  which  in  the  tale  is  known  as  the 
Whole  Family.  The  four  men  have  knocked 
about  a  good  deal  in  the  literary  and  journal- 
istic life  of  New  York,  their  daily  work  had 
brought  them  into  contact  with  publishers  and 
editors,  and  they  have  evolved  a  scheme  for  a 
weekly  which  they  believe  is  certain  of  popular- 

193 


194  THE  NEW  YOEK 

ity  and  financial  success.  This  scheme  is 
broached  for  the  first  time  as  the  four  are  sit- 
ting round  a  table  in  a  restaurant  not  far  from 
Washington  Square.  It  is  New  Year's  Eve. 
Barrifield,  one  of  the  two  writers,  in  his  soft, 
drawly,  delightful  voice  unfolds  the  idea,  point- 
ing out  its  novelty  and  arguing  its  certainty  of 
success.  Just  before  midnight  they  leave  the 
dinner  table,  and  in  high  spirits  cross  to  Broad- 
way and  move  northward  toward  Grace 
Church.  At  Tenth  Street  they  stop  to  watch 
the  familiar,  pathetic  spectacle — the  Bread 
Line — that  line  of  waiting,  hungry  men,  each 
of  whom  receives  every  night  at  twelve  o'clock 
a  cup  of  coffee  and  a  loaf  of  bread.  This  is  the 
logical  beginning  of  the  story.  Its  logical  end 
comes  a  year  later,  when,  having  lost  every- 
thing in  the  venture  on  which  they  had  builded 
such  extravagant  hopes,  they  come  upon  one 
another  on  the  same  corner,  driven  there  by 
hunger,  and  waiting  their  turns. 

Quite  as  interesting  as  the  tale  itself  is  the 
story  of  how  The  Bread  Line  came  to  be  writ- 
ten. The  experiences  upon  which  it  was  based 
were  actual  experiences  of  the  year  1897.  It 


OF  THE  NOVELISTS  195 

is  all  true,  or  nearly  true.  The  four  most 
prominent  men  of  the  book  are  Barrifield  and 
Perny,  the  writers ;  and  Van  Born  and  Living- 
stone, the  artists.  The  initial  letter  of  the 
names  gives  the  clue  to  the  real  originals. 
Barrifield  is  Irving  Bacheller;  Perny  is  Albert 
Bigelow  Paine ;  Van  Born  and  Livingstone  are 
respectively  Frank  Verbeck  and  Orson  Lowell. 
The  stout,  middle-aged  man  named  Capers, 
who  describes  to  Perny  the  art  of  transforming 
an  autumn  poem  into  a  Christmas  poem,  and 
of  changing  "the  golden  rod  like  a  plumed 
warder  closing  the  gates  of  summer"  of  Sep- 
tember, to  the  "chrysanthemum,  a  royal  god- 
dess at  the  gates  of  fall"  of  November,  was  the 
late  E.  K.  Munkittrick,  an  inheritance  of  the 
New  York  Ledger  school  of  letters,  and  one  of 
the  brightest  and  most  amiable  of  the  lighter 
verse  makers  of  yesterday.  The  original  of 
Bates,  the  dissolute  advertising  man,  had  a  real 
existence.  Frisbie,  was  Louis  Klopsch,  the 
founder  of  the  Christian  Herald,  in  the  book 
called  The  Voice  of  Light.  The  Eev.  Monte 
Banks  was  the  Eev.  T.  DeWitt  Talmage. 
McWilliams  of  Dawn  was  P.  McArthur  of 


196     NEW  YORK  OF  THE  NOVELISTS 

Truth.  The  Woman's  Monthly  was  the  Ladies' 
Home  Journal.  The  Youth's  Friend  was  the 
Youth's  Companion.  The  Road  to  Fortune  was 
Success.  The  Whole  Family,  the  paper  about 
which  the  plot  revolves,  was  in  reality  Youth 
and  Home,  of  which  the  first  issue  bore  the  date 
November  6,  1897.  The  publication  offices  of 
the  journal  were  at  127  Fifth  Avenue,  where 
Verbeck,  Hamilton  King,  and  Paine  had  a  suite 
of  rooms  on  the  top  floor.  As  Paine  was  to  be 
the  editor,  it  was  decided  to  have  the  publica- 
tion office  there,  and  thereby  save  rent.  127 
Fifth  Avenue  then  had  a  flight  of  steps  from 
the  pavement  to  the  first  floor  above  the  base- 
ment. That  has  been  changed  now,  but  other- 
wise the  appearance  of  the  building  is  the  same 
as  it  was  nineteen  years  ago.  In  connection 
with  the  correspondence  between  Mr.  Truman 
Livingstone  and  Miss  Dorothy  Castle  and  their 
subsequent  marriage,  it  may  be  said  that  there 
was  a  real  "Dorothy"  and  that  since  October 
20,  1898,  there  has  been  a  Mrs.  Orson  Lowell. 


CHAPTER  III 

The  Maison  de  Shine — The  Original  of  the  Actor's  Board- 
ing House  in  the  Helen  Van  Campen  Stories — Following 
Vaudeville  to  Its  Lair. 

MORE  than  eight  years  ago  there  appeared 
from  the  pen  of  Helen  Van  Campen  a  volume 
of  short  stories  entitled  At  the  Actor's  Board- 
ing House.  These  tales  were  of  a  very  unusual 
quality.  "Mrs.  De  Shine's  boarding-house 
was  a  microcosm  which  becomes  just  as  real 
to  us  as  the  Maison  Tellier,  or  the  Pension 
Vauquer,"  said  one  critic  of  the  time.  "We 
come  to  know  the  blondined  ladies  washing  out 
their  stockings  in  the  wash  bowl,  or  fighting  for 
first  place  at  table,  where  they  are  served  with 
ham  and  eggs  and  'cawfy.'  We  seem  to  have 
met  the  gentlemen  who  are  l standing  off*  Mrs. 
De  Shine  for  an  overdue  board  bill  and  curry- 
ing favour  with  her  by  petting  her  wheezy  poo- 
dle, Fido.  There  is  pathos  here,  and  there  is 
humour,  and  Helen  Van  Campen  has  done  for 
one  section  of  New  York  what  was  done  years 
ago  for  another  section  by  Messrs.  Harrigan 

197 


ALTHOUGH  IN  HELEN  VAN  CAMPEN'S  "AT 
THE  ACTOB'S  BOARDING-HOUSE"  THE 
"MAISON  DE  SHINE"  WAS  PICTURED 
AS  BEING  IN  IRVING  PLACE,  IN  REAL- 
ITY THE  HOUSE  WHICH  INSPIRED  THE 
STORIES  WAS  ON  THE  NORTH  SIDE  OF 
FOURTEENTH  STREET,  BETWEEN  THIRD 
AND  SECOND  AVENUES.  IT  WAS 
THERE,  UNCHANGED,  THREE  OR  FOUR 
YEARS  AGO,  BUT  HAS  NOW  DISAP- 
PEARED 


198 


NEW  YORK  OF  THE  NOVELISTS     199 

and  Hart,  of  whom  Mr.  Howells  wrote  with 
sympathetic  appreciation.  No  one  before  has 
given  us  so  realistic  a  picture  of  the  existence 
which  centres  around  Irving  Place — the  loves, 
the  jealousies,  the  makeshifts,  and  the  miseries 
of  the  vaudeville  performers  who  make  up  a 
little  world  in  themselves. " 

In  At  the  Actor's  Boar  ding-House  and  The 
Maison  de  Shine,  the  subsequent  book  dealing 
with  materially  the  same  people,  the  boarding- 
house  was  represented  as  being  on  Irving 
Place.  As  a  matter  of  fact  the  original  Pen- 
sion de  Shine  was  situated  on  the  north  side 
of  Fourteenth  Street,  between  Second  and 
Third  Avenues.  When  Mrs.  Van  Campen  be- 
gan newspaper  work  in  New  York  she  noticed 
that  vaudeville  invariably  proceeded  down- 
town, on  arriving  "on  Broadway."  The 
vaudeville  people  spoke  much  of  that  noted 
thoroughfare,  but  apparently  dwelt  in  a  hum- 
bler neighbourhood.  So  the  writer  followed 

vaudeville  to  its  lair,  and  found,  at East 

Fourteenth  Street,  the  sketch  team  who 
" worked"  for  "thirty  a  week  and  cakes"  and, 
in  just  as  great  numbers,  the  "single  act"  or 


200    NEW  YORK  OF  THE  NOVELISTS 

other  turn,  "who  worked  steadily  at  $150  to 
$200  a  week/'  "They  all  lived  alike, "  says 
Mrs.  Van  Campen.  "Seven  a  week  it  cost — 
and  seven  seemed  plenty,  upon  investigation. 
I  stayed  two  weeks.  During  the  second  week, 
the  landlady,  in  tears,  requested  me  to  depart. 
I  asked  the  reason  of  her  inhospitable  words. 
'Last  night  at  dinner,'  said  she,  with  visible 
agitation,  'Berther  come  in,  and  ast  you  four 
distinct  times,  "Will  you  have  steak?"  An' 
I  stood  there  makin'  signs,  an'  makin'  'em 
again.  But  it  didn't  have  no  effect.  Mebbe 
it'll  please  you  to  know  that  I  went  an'  paid 
sixty  cents  for  sirloin  steak — because  I  ain't  a 
fool,  an'  I  see  you  didn't  like  the  grub;  but  kin 
I  on  seven  a  week  give  them  people  better? 
Well,  it's  just  makin'  me  sick  to  watch  you, 
an'  I  got  to  ast  you  to  leave.  It's  better  so.' 
I  met  the  landlady  a  few  months  ago.  She 
wore  at  least  a  million  dollars  worth  of  dia- 
monds, and  a  golden  i front'  of  great  beauty. 
'I  see  you  ain't  doin'  a  thing  to  old  Fourteenth 
Street,'  she  said  affably;  'well,  we  all  got  our 
games,  I  s'pose — but  it  does  seem  as  if  people 'd 
ruther  read  about  Fifth  Avenoo.  I  would.'  " 


IRVING  PLACE  LOOKING  SOUTH  FROM  GRAMERCY  PARK.  THIS  IS  THE  HEART  OF 
0.  HENRY  LAND.  PORTER  PENETRATED  EVERY  CORNER  OF  "LITTLE  OLD 
BAGDAD  ON  THE  SUBWAY,"  BUT  ABOUT  HERE  WERE  THE  SCENES  OF  THE 
STORIES  NEAREST  TO  HIS  HEART.  TWO  BLOCKS  AND  A  HALF  FROM  THE 
POINT  FROM  WHICH  THIS  PHOTOGRAPH  WAS  TAKEN  WAS  NO.  55,  WHERE 

PORTER  ONCE  LIVED.  ALMOST  ACROSS  THE  STREET  WAS  THE  SALOON  OF 
"THE  LOST  BLEND,"  AND  JUST  ROUND  THE  CORNER  THE  "OLD  MUNICH" 
OF  "THE  HALBERDIER  OF  THE  LITTLE  RHEINSCHLOSS" 


CHAPTER  IV 

Lower  Second  Avenue  Again — Stuyvesant  Square — "The 
fortune  Hunter"— St.  Mark's  Place— "Felix  O'Day." 

ONCE  upon  a  time  lower  Second  Avenue  cher- 
ished seriously  the  idea  of  rivalling  Fifth  Ave- 
nue as  a  lane  of  aristocracy.  Most  of  the 
stately  mansions  of  other  days  have  gone,  but 
here  and  there  is  a  structure  or  a  part  of  a 
structure  attesting  the  old  ambition.  Then,  too, 
are  Stuyvesant  Square  and  Rutherford  Square 
still  maintaining  their  pride  and  dignity  in  the 
face  of  the  army  of  invasion.  To  that  portion 
of  the  city  David  Graham  Phillips  staked  a 
claim  with  The  Fortune  Hunter,  a  novel  which, 
in  itself  of  no  marked  significance,  was  exceed- 
ingly vital  as  a  reflection  of  a  certain  phase  of 
metropolitan  life.  The  character  from  whom 
the  book  took  its  name,  the  rascally  Feuerstein, 
lived  in  a  boarding-house  on  Sixteenth  Street 
just  beyond  the  eastern  gates  of  Stuyvesant 
Square.  The  house  is  definitely  described  and 

is  easy  of  identification.    When  the  fates  were 

201 


202    NEW  YOEK  OF  THE  NOVELISTS 

kind  and  he  found  some  unsuspecting  acquaint- 
ance who  could  be  inveigled  into  paying  for 
his  dinner  he  dined  at  the  Cafe  Boulevard  on 
lower  Second  Avenue.  On  the  benches  of 
Tompkins  Square  he  made  love  to  many  of  the 
women  upon  whom  he  deigned  to  practise  his 
arts  of  fascination.  To  his  well  deserved  end 
he  came  in  the  back  room  of  a  saloon  on  East 
Sixth  Street  two  hundred  feet  from  Second 
Avenue. 

While  we  are  in  the  neighbourhood  let  us 
turn  to  another  and  more  recent  book,  F.  Hop- 
kinson  Smith's  Felix  O'Day.  There,  with  that 
characteristic  touch  of  familiar  affection,  the 
author  plays  about  St.  Mark's  Place,  the 
church,  and  the  old  graveyard.  "Here  and 
there, "  he  tells  us,  "in  the  whir  of  the  great 
citya  restful  breathing  spot  is  found,  its  stretch 
of  grass  dotted  with  moss-covered  tombs 
grouped  around  a  low  pitched  church.  At  cer- 
tain hours  the  sound  of  bells  is  heard  and  the 
low  rhythm  of  the  organ  throbbing  through  the 
aisles.  Then  lines  of  quietly  dressed  wor- 
shippers stroll  along  the  bordered  walks,  the 
children's  hands  clasped  in  their  mothers',  the 


IN  "THE  FORTUNE  HUNTEB"  DAVID  GRAHAM 
PHILLIPS  STAKED  A  VERY  DEFINITE  CLAIM 
TO  A  SECTION  OF  THE  CITY,  THAT  LYING  TO 
THE  EAST  AND  SOUTH  OF  LOWER  SECOND 
AVENUE.  ABOUT  THESE  STREETS  THE  AD- 
VENTURER FEUEBSTEIN  ROAMED,  DINING  IN 

THE  OLD  CAFE  BOULEVARD,  AT  SOME  ONE 
ELSE'S  EXPENSE,  MAKING  LOVE  IN  TOM- 
KINS  SQUARE,  FLASHING  HIS  TEETH  ACROSS 
THE  COUNTER  OF  BRAUNER'S  DELICATESSEN 
SHOP  IN  AVENUE  A,  AND  COMING  TO  HIS 
END  IN  THE  BACK  ROOM  OF  A  SALOON  ON 
SIXTH  STREET,  NEAR  SECOND  AVENUE. 
THE  BOARDING  HOUSE  IN  WHICH  HE  LIVED 
WAS  VERY  MINUTELY  DESCRIBED  AND  MAY 
EASILY  BE  IDENTIFIED.  IT  WAS  ON  SIX- 
TEENTH STREET  IN  THE  BLOCK  JUST  BE- 
YOND THE  EASTERN  GATES  OF  STUYVESAlfT 
SQUARE 

203 


204    NEW  YOEK  OF  THE  NOVELISTS 

arched  vestibuled  door  closing  upon  them. 
Most  of  these  oases,  like  Trinity,  St.  Paul's, 
and  St.  Mark's,  differ  but  little — the  same  low 
pitched  church,  the  same  slender  spire,  the 
same  stretch  of  green  with  its  scattered  grave- 
stones. And,  outside,  the  same  old  demon  of 
hurry,  defied  and  hurled  back  by  a  lifted  hand 
armed  with  the  cross."  To  the  eyes  of  P. 
Hopkinson  Smith,  of  these  three  breathing 
places,  St.  Mark's  was  a  little  greener  in  the 
early  spring,  less  dusty  in  the  summer  heat, 
less  bare  and  uninviting  in  the  winter  snow. 
Also  it  is  the  most  restful  of  them  all.  Out  of 
its  shade  and  sunshine  run  queer  side  streets, 
with  still  queerer  houses,  rising  two  stories  and 
an  attic,  each  with  a  dormer  and  huge  chimney. 
"Dried-up  old  aristocrats,  these,  living  on  the 
smallest  of  pensions,  taking  toll  of  notaries 
public,  shyster  lawyers,  pedlars  of  steel  pens, 
die-cutters,  and  dismal  real-estate  agents  in 
dismal  offices  boasting  a  desk,  two  chairs,  and 
a  map." 


CHAPTER  V 

The  Heart  of  0.  Henry  Land— Where  Porter 
The  Hotel  America— Old  Munich  and  the  Little   Rhein- 
schloss. 

IN  the  course  of  this  rambling  pilgrimage  the 
name  of  Sidney  Porter  has  appeared,  and  will 
very  likely  continue  to  appear,  two  or  three 
times  to  one  mention  of  any  other  one  writer. 
This  is  due  not  only  to  the  high  esteem  in  which 
the  pilgrim  holds  the  work  of  that  singular  and 
gifted  man,  but  also  to  the  fact  that  the  dozen 
volumes  containing  the  work  of  0.  Henry  con- 
stitute a  kind  of  convenient  bank  upon  which 
the  pilgrim  is  able  to  draw  in  the  many  mo- 
ments of  emergency.  Perfect  frankness  is  a 
weapon  with  which  to  forestall  criticism,  and 
so,  to  express  the  matter  very  bluntly,  when- 
ever the  writer  finds  himself  in  a  street  or  a 
neighbourhood  about  which  there  is  little  ap- 
parent to  say,  he  turns  to  The  Four  Million,  or 
The  Trimmed  Lamp,  or  The  Voice  of  the  City, 
or  Whirligigs,  or  Strictly  Business,  and  in  one 

205 


206  THE  NEW  YORK 

of  these  books  is  able  to  find  the  rescuing  al- 
lusion or  descriptive  line.  The  remote  trails, 
Bedloe's  Island,  the  Battery,  the  Bowery,  to 
the  south;  Harlem,  Hellgate,  and  Hell's 
Kitchen,  to  the  north;  stand  for  service.  But 
it  is  with  a  quickening  glow  and  an  enthusiasm 
that  is  genuine  that  he  plunges  garrulously  into 
the  subject  of  what  may  be  called  the  heart  of 
0.  Henry  land. 

On  the  west  side  of  Irving  Place,  between 
Seventeenth  and  Eighteenth  Streets,  there  is 
a  dingy,  four-story,  brownstone  house.  The 
shutters  are  up.  The  windows  of  the  upper 
stories  stare  down  at  the  passer-by  with  a  kind 
of  hurt  blindness.  It  is  as  if  the  structure 
itself  was  conscious  of  a  speedy  demise,  of  a 
swiftly  coming  demolition.  Next  year,  next 
month,  next  week,  to-morrow,  perhaps,  it  will 
be  gone,  with  a  towering  skyscraper  springing 
up  on  the  site.  The  number  of  the  building  is 
55.  There,  in  the  front  room  on  the  second 
floor,  Sidney  Porter  lived  in  the  days  when  he 
was  learning  to  read  the  heart  of  the  Big  City 
of  Razzle  Dazzle.  And  as  he  was  always  con- 
stitutionally opposed  to  anything  that  involved 


OF  THE  NOVELISTS  207 

arduous  physical  exercise,  the  quintessence  of 
0.  Henry  land  lies  within  a  circle  of  half  a  mile 
radius,  with  number  55  as  the  centre.  Within 
that  circle  may  be  found  the  hotels  of  the  Span- 
ish American  New  York  stories,  the  Old 
Munich  of  "The  Halberdier  of  the  Little  Khein- 
schloss,"  Chubb 's  Third  Avenue  Restaurant, 
the  Gramercy  Park  which  is  so  conspicuous  in 
his  city  tales  of  aristocratic  flavour,  the  par- 
ticular saloon  which  served  as  the  background 
for  "The  Lost  Blend, "  the  bench— which  could 
be  confounded  with  no  other  bench  in  the  world 
— which  Stuffy  Pete,  one  of  "Two  Thanksgiv- 
ing Day  Gentlemen,"  regarded  as  personal 
property,  and  those  other  benches  in  the  other 
square,  six  blocks  to  the  north,  where  disconso- 
late Caliphs,  shorn  of  their  power,  sat  brooding 
over  the  judgments  of  Allah,  where  fifth  wheels 
rolled  along  asphalted  pavements,  and  Jinns 
came  obedient  to  the  rubbing  of  the  lamp. 

To  Mr.  Eobert  Eudd  Whiting,  with  whom 
he  had  been  associated  in  the  early  days  when 
he  first  began  to  contribute  to  the  columns  of 
Ainslee's  Magazine,  Sidney  Porter  once  ex- 
tended an  invitation  to  a  luncheon.  It  was  to 


208    NEW  YORK  OF  THE  NOVELISTS 

be  a  Spanish  American  luncheon  in  the  course 
of  which  0.  Henry  was  to  make  his  guest  fa- 
miliar with  certain  flavours  and  dishes  that  he 
himself  had  learned  to  like  or  at  least  to  endure 
in  the  days  of  his  exile  in  the  lands  of  the  Lotus 
Eaters.  The  two  men  at  the  time  were  cross- 
ing Union  Square.  "Come  with  me,"  said  0. 
Henry,  "I  will  show  you  the  real  place.  Over 

at  M 's  (mentioning  a  restaurant  in  a  street 

to  the  south)  you  may  see  the  Senors,  the  Cap- 
itans,  the  Majors,  the  Colonels.  But  if  you 
would  sit  with  the  Generalissimos,  the  Impera- 
tors,  the  truly  exalted  of  those  countries  of 
Central  and  South  America,  accept  my  guiding 
hand."  And  from  the  square  they  turned  into 
Fifteenth  Street  and  found,  on  the  south  side, 
some  seventy-five  yards  east  of  Fourth  Avenue 
the  Hotel  America,  with  its  patronage  of  vola- 
tile Latins,  who,  if  they  were  not  actually  plan- 
ning revolution  and  the  overthrow  of  some  un- 
stable government,  at  least  had  all  the  appear- 
ance of  arch  conspirators.  It  was  the  atmos- 
phere which  went  to  the  making  of  "The  Gold 
That  Glitters,"  which,  if  you  remember,  began 
at  the  very  point  at  which  the  invitation  was 


FBONTING  ON  IRVING  PLACE  IS  THE  SALOON  OF  O. 
HENEY'S  "THE  LOST  BLEND."  IT  WAS  HEBE 
THAT  THE  ADVENTURERS  TOILED  TO  FIND  AGAIN 
THE  PROPER  INGREDIENTS  FOR  THE  MOST  WON- 
DERFUL DRINK  IN  THE  WORLD,  A  BEVERAGE  THAT 
HAD  MOVED  NICARAGUA  TO  RAISE  THE  DUTY  ON 
CIGARETTES,  AND  TO  CONTEMPLATE  A  DECLARA- 
TION OF  WAR  AGAINST  THE  UNITED  STATES  AND 
GREAT  BRITAIN 


209 


210  THE  NEW  YOBK 

extended,  "  where  Broadway  skirts  the  corner 
of  the  square  presided  over  by  George  the 
Veracious." 

In  serial  form  the  articles  that  make  up 
this  volume  ran  in  the  Bookman.  In  the  issue 
of  that  magazine  for  June,  1914,  there  ap- 
peared an  0.  Henry  symposium.  Ten  lists 
representing  ten  opinions  as  to  the  ten  stories 
that  had  made  the  most  lasting  impression  were 
printed.  One  of  the  few  tales  that  appeared 
on  several  of  the  lists  was  "The  Halberdier  of 
the  Little  Eheinschloss. ' '  The  Bierhalle  and 
restaurant  called  Old  Munich  was  the  one  of 
which  Porter  said  that  long  ago  it  was  the  re- 
sort of  interesting  Bohemians,  but  that  now 
"only  artists  and  musicians  and  literary  folk 
frequent  it."  For  many  years,  the  tale 
informs  us,  the  customers  of  Old  Munich  have 
accepted  the  place  as  a  faithful  copy  from  the 
ancient  German  town.  The  big  hall,  with  its 
smoky  rafters,  rows  of  imported  steins,  por- 
trait of  Goethe,  and  verses  painted  on  the  walls 
— translated  into  German  from  the  original  of 
the  Cincinnati  poets — seems  atmospherically 
correct  when  viewed  through  the  bottom  of  a 


OF  THE  NOVELISTS  211 

glass.  Then  the  proprietors  added  the  room 
above,  called  it  the  Little  Rheinschloss,  and 
built  in  a  stairway.  Up  there  was  an  imitation 
stone  parapet,  ivy  covered,  and  the  walls 
painted  to  represent  depth  and  distance,  with 
the  Ehine  winding  at  the  base  of  the  vineyarded 
slopes,  and  the  Castle  of  Ehrenbreitstein  loom- 
ing directly  opposite  the  entrance.  To  Old 
Munich  came  the  young  man  with  the  wrecked 
good  clothes  and  the  hungry  look,  to  assume 
the  armour  of  the  ancient  halberdier,  and,  on  a 
certain  eventful  evening,  to  be  confiscated  to 
serve  menially  at  the  banquet  board. 

Into  many  parts  of  the  city  had  the  present 
pilgrim  ventured  in  his  search  for  the  back- 
ground that  would  best  fit  the  very  definite 
description  of  the  Old  Munich  of  the  tale.  For 
a  time  the  hunt  seemed  vain.  But  one  day  he 
spoke  to  Mr.  Oilman  Hall  on  the  subject.  The 
latter  laughed.  "Do  I  know  the  real  Old 
Munich?  Very  well,  indeed.  I  dined  there 
often  with  Porter.  No  wonder  you  have  not 
found  it.  You  have  been  looking  too  far  to  the 
north,  to  the  south,  to  the  west.  Don't  you 
realise  that  Porter  would  never  have  walked 


212 


THE  NEW  YOEK 


that  far  if  he  could  have  helped  it?  The  only 
time  I  ever  persuaded  him  afoot  as  far  as  the 
Eiverside  Drive  and  Seventy-second  Street  he 
stopped,  and  asked  with  an  injured  air,  if  we 


THE  INTERIOR  OF  "OLD  MUNICH"  OP  O.  HENRY'S  "THE  HALBER- 
DIER OF  THE  LITTLE  RHEINSCHLOSS."  "THE  BIG  HALL,  WITH 
ITS  SMOKY  RAFTERS,  ROWS  OF  IMPORTED  STEINS,  PORTRAIT 
OF  GOETHE,  AND  VERSES  PAINTED  ON  THE  WALLS — TRANS- 
LATED INTO  GERMAN  FROM  THE  ORIGINAL  OF  THE  CINCIN- 
NATI POETS" 


OF  THE  NOVELISTS  213 

had  not  yet  passed  Peekskill.  Here  is  number 
55.  Why  not  try  just  round  the  corner?"  So 
fifty  feet  to  the  south,  and  a  short  block  to  the 
east,  and  the  setting  of  the  tale  was  found. 
Formerly  "old  man  Brockmann,"  who  defied 
the  threatened  suit,  was  the  proprietor.  There 
can  be  no  indiscretion  in  identifying  him  as  the 
Muschenheim  of  the  old  Arena  in  West  Thirty- 
first  Street  and  of  the  Hotel  Astor.  Since  his 
time  Old  Munich  has  been  known  both  as 
Scheffel  Hall  and  as  Allaire's.  It  is  at  the 
northwest  corner  of  Third  Avenue  and  Seven- 
teenth Street.  There  is  a  natural  free  hand 
swing  to  certain  parts  of  the  0.  Henry  descrip- 
tion, but  even  without  the  corroboration  of 
those  who  knew  personally  of  Porter's  associ- 
ations with  the  place,  one  glance  at  the  long 
raftered  room  is  enough  to  stamp  it  as  the  place 
where  the  waiter  known  simply  as  Number 
Eighteen  witnessed  the  comedy  of  the  hot  soup 
tureen  and  the  blistered  hands,  and  William 
Deering  finished  the  three  months  of  earning 
his  own  living  without  once  being  discharged 
for  incompetence. 


CHAPTER  VI 

Once  More  in  Washington  Square — "The  Last  of  the 
Knickerbockers" — Waverly  Place — St.  George's — "The 
Boule  Cabinet"— The  Marathon— No.  13  Washington  Square 
— Rupert  Court. 

THE  spell  of  the  old  city  was  strong  on  the  late 
Herman  Knickerbocker  Viele  when  he  wrote 
the  charming  and  whimsical  The  Last  of  the 
Knickerbockers,  and  the  tale  revolves  inti- 
mately about  the  streets  adjacent  to  Washing- 
ton Square.  The  principal  setting  of  the  scene 
was  the  Buggies  mansion  on  Kenilworth  Place, 
which  had  gone  the  way  of  so  many  of  the  aris- 
tocratic New  York  mansions  of  another  age 
and  become  a  boarding-house.  But  even  in  its 
fallen  estate  it  was  inhabited  by  old  aristocrats, 
among  them  Alida  Van  Wandeleer  and  her 
mother,  with  ancestors  buried  in  St.  Mark's 
Churchyard.  For  the  Kenilworth  Place  of  the 
story  read  Waverly  Place.  The  parlour  win- 
dows of  the  house  looked  out  on  the  street 
across  the  railings  of  an  iron  balcony,  wherein 

214 


NEW  YOEK  OF  THE  NOVELISTS     215 

the  sinewy  tentacles  of  an  old  wistaria  vine 
were  interwoven  and  interlaced.  There  was  a 
street  lamp  directly  in  front,  and  often  at  dusk, 
before  the  shades  were  drawn,  a  rectangle  of 
yellow  light  was  thrown  on  either  wall  within, 
with  the  pattern  of  Nottingham  lace  curtains 
and  the  moving  silhouettes  of  leaves.  The 
book  dealt  with  what  was  called  the  "  below 
Fourteenth  Street  colony."  Near  the  Buggies 
mansion  was  the  Cafe  Chianti,  where  they  had 
music  and  charged  only  fifty  cents,  including 
wine.  The  Cafe  Chianti  was  in  what  had  been 
grandfather's  old  house.  When  Alida  and  her 
godmother  went  to  call  on  old  Mrs.  Van  der 
Weiff,  "the  old  lady  who  lived  so  excessively 
upstairs,  and  opened  the  front  door  by  machin- 
ery, "  they  proceeded  from  Waverly  Place  east- 
ward to  University  Place ;  then  north  past  the 
French  Hotel,  the  old  furniture  shop  that  had 
seen  so  much  better  days,  and  the  library  whose 
subscription  list  is  history  itself.  At  Four- 
teenth Street  they  avoided  Dead  Man's  Curve 
by  a  diagonal  course  across  Union  Square.  To 
the  older  woman  every  step  of  the  way  called 
up  a  memory.  At  Irving  Place  she  had  an 


216  THE  NEW  YOBK 

anecdote  for  every  corner;  at  St.  George's  a 
romance  for  every  house.  "Ah,  the  good  old 
people  and  the  good  old  days,  when  the  Eden 
gates  stood  wide  open  as  those  of  Stuyvesant 
Park!"  The  Last  of  the  Knickerbockers  was 
one  of  the  few  really  "  atmospheric "  society 
novels  of  New  York  ever  written,  hitting  off 
the  days  of  two  or  three  decades  ago,  when  the 
last  of  the  old  families  were  giving  way  socially 
to  the  new  millionaires,  the  kind  who  knew  "no- 
body very  much  yet."  Just  millionaires,  and 
wandering  dukes,  and  people  they  crossed  the 
ocean  with;  of  whom  Alida  doubted  "if  they 
could  have  given  anything  very  big  without  the 
Waldorf  register." 

After  Princeton  Burton  Egbert  Stevenson 
went  to  New  York  to  work  on  the  Tribune  for 
a  time  and  while  there  gathered  a  knowledge 
of  the  city  of  which  he  made  much  use  in  The 
Holladay  Case,  Tine  Marathon  Mystery,  and 
The  Boule  Cabinet.  In  the  first  named  book 
the  address  of  the  Cafe  Jourdain,  where 
Frances  Holladay  was  imprisoned,  was  given 
definitely  as  number  54  West  Houston  Street. 
That  house  has  been  torn  down  and  on  the  site 


OF  THE  NOVELISTS  217 

is  the  new  home  of  the  New  York  Telephone 
Company.  The  principal  scenes  of  The  Boule 
Cabinet  were  laid  in  the  old  house  still  standing 
at  the  northwest  corner  of  Fifth  Avenue  and 
Ninth  Street — a  two  story  and  basement 
square  brick  dwelling  with  a  yard  at  the  side 
— "that  plot  of  ground  next  door"  to  which 
Vantine  makes  reference.  Incidentally  that 
house  was  the  one  where  Mr.  Davis 's  Van  Bib- 
ber found  his  burglar.  It  was  there  that  the 
boule  cabinet  was  taken  and  there  that  the  sub- 
sequent tragedies  took  place.  While  on  the 
subject  it  may  be  well  to  venture  briefly  into 
streets  which  are  legitimately  in  the  province 
of  another  chapter.  In  The  Marathon  Mystery 
Lester 's  home  was  given  as  the  Marathon 
Apartment  House,  which  was  supposed  to  be 
directly  opposite  the  Tenderloin  Police  Station 
on  West  Thirtieth  Street.  When  The  Mara- 
thon Mystery  was  written  the  station  was  on 
the  north  side  of  the  street  and  the  opposite 
side  occupied  by  a  row  of  dwellings.  The  au- 
thor placed  the  apartment  purposely  where  no 
apartment  was  and  invented  a  name  for  it,  be- 
cause he  wished  to  avoid  trouble  with  a  real 


218  THE  NEW  YOEK 

place  on  account  of  the  extraordinary  events 
that  were  to  happen  there.  Lester  continued 
to  live  at  The  Marathon  in  the  subsequent 
stories,  The  Boule  Cabinet  and  The  Gloved 
Hand.  Apropos  of  this  the  author  was  caught 
napping,  for  in  1908  the  Tenderloin  Station 
was  transferred  to  a  new  building  on  the  other 
side  of  the  street,  on  the  exact  site  of  the  sup- 
posed Marathon. 

Across  Washington  Square  Bohemia  and 
Proletaire  gaze  enviously  at  Belgravia,  partly 
obscured  by  the  waving  branches  of  the  trees 
and  the  white  arch.  That  line  of  stately  dwell- 
ings is  a  sturdy  bulwark  which  has  been  resist- 
ing invasion  for  years  and  seems  destined  to 
continue  to  resist  for  many  years  to  come. 
Long  ago  Henry  James  set  the  fashion  by  plac- 
ing the  scene  of  one  of  his  novels  there.  That 
example  has  been  followed  by  the  men  and 
women  of  the  newer  generation  until  the  mere 
mention  of  the  heroes  and  heroines  of  all  the 
fiction  dealing  with  New  York  who  have  in- 
habited these  structures  of  red  and  white  would 
assume  formidable  proportions.  For  example, 
it  was  only  a  year  or  two  ago  that  Leroy  Scott 


IN  THE  OLD-TIME  NOVELS  OF  NEW  YORK  LIFE  VISITING  ENGLISHMEN  IN- 
VARIABLY STOPPED  AT  THE  BREVOORT.  IN  ITS  NEW  GUISE  THE  HOTEL, 
WHICH  STANDS  AT  THE  NORTHEAST  CORNER  OF  FIFTH  AVENUE  AND 
EIGHTH  STREET,  FORMERLY  BETTER  KNOWN  AS  CLINTON  PLACE,  HAS 
NOT  LOST  ITS  POPULARITY  AS  A  BACKGROUND  FOR  FICTION.  IT  PLAYED 
A  PART  IN  BASIL  KING'S  "THE  INNER  SHRINE"  AND  MARIE  VAN  SAANEN 

ALGI'S  "THE  BLIND  WHO  SEE" 


OF  THE  NOVELISTS  219 

wrote  No.  13  Washington  Square.  Of  course 
there  is  no  number  13,  the  exact  spot  where 
such  a  number  should  stand  being  in  the  middle 
of  Fifth  Avenue  as  it  sweeps  northward  from 
the  Arch.  The  exact  house  that  Mr.  Scott  had 
in  mind  was  number  17,  but  he  took  the  precau- 
tion of  changing  the  number  to  one  that  did  not 
exist  and  also  of  moving  the  house  across 
Fifth  Avenue  so  that  its  real  entrance  opened 
upon  Washington  Mews,  for  the  reason  that 
Mrs.  De  Peyster,  the  grande  dame  of  the  novel, 
still  maintained  a  carriage.  In  another  of 
these  houses  dwelt,  in  the  full  flood  days  of  his 
material  prosperity,  Arthur  Train's  Artemas 
Quibble.  That  particular  house  is  now  a  studio 
building.  Next  door  perhaps  was  the  home  of 
Robert  Walmsley  who  married  the  Matterhorn 
in  the  person  of  a  certain  Miss  Alicia  Van 
Something-or-Other,  and  yielded  weakly  to  the 
spell  of  his  early  environment;  all  of  which  0. 
Henry  chronicled  in  "The  Defeat  of  the  City." 
A  dozen  memories  of  other  Porter  heroes  and 
heroines  might  easily  be  found  in  the  neigh- 
bourhood. 
Allusion  has  been  made  to  Washington 


220  THE  NEW  YORK 

Mews.  This  street  and  the  corresponding  one 
to  the  west,  known  as  Macdougal  Alley,  are  two 
of  the  quaintest  relics  of  the  older  New  York. 
They  are  familiar  to  tens  of  thousands.  But 
how  many  New  Yorkers  are  familiar  with  Bu- 
pert  Court,  also  in  the  immediate  neighbour- 
hood, which  plays  a  conspicuous  part  in  George 
Bronson-Howard's  recently  issued  God 's  Man? 
Here  in  his  own  words  is  Mr.  Bronson-How- 
ard's  description  of  the  court,  of  how  to  find  it, 
and  of  how  he  himself  discovered  it.  "Walk 
down  Eighth  Street  from  Macdougal  toward 
Sixth  Avenue.  You  will  find  a  little  archway 
on  the  north  side,  and  a  dry  gutter.  I  discov- 
ered it  when  the  gutter  was  wet  and  I  was  in  a 
hurry.  It  was  before  I  could  afford  cabs,  and 
my  silk  hat  went  several  feet  toward  the  south. 
Thus  I  found  that  the  alleyway  opened  into  a 
court  containing  several  trees  and  a  number  of 
window-boxes.  .A  complete  square  of  a  court 
with  only  one  outlet — the  way  I  came.  I  was 
told  it  had  been  an  inn-yard.  It  is  now  oc- 
cupied exclusively  by  Nubians,  Senegambians, 
and  Ethiops.  A  previous  book,  a  romance,  An 
Enemy  to  Society,  had  the  house  of  the  dominie 


OF  THE  NOVELISTS  221 

on  West  Sixth  Street — a  former  parsonage  be- 
come a  thieves'  rookery — the  original  is  just 
off  Sixth  Avenue,  going  west.  The  Hotel  Tip- 
pecanoe  in  God's  Man  was  the  Hotel  Tyler  on 
West  Thirty-fifth  Street  transferred  south  to 
Lafayette  Street.  The  Tyler  became  the  Stur- 
tevant,  and  was  before  that  the  notorious  Ti- 
voli.  During  fifteen  years  of  New  York  off  and 
on,  I  always  lived  in  Greenwich  Village. " 


CHAPTER  VII 

Gramercy  Park — The  Home  of  the  Von  der  Ruyslings — 
"The  Alternative"— Clubs  on  the  North  and  Clubs  on  the 
South. 

IF  there  is  one  corner  of  the  city  which  more 
than  any  other  has  received  the  patronage  of 
the  modern  novelist  of  New  York  life  it  is  un- 
questionably Gramercy  Park.  There  is  hardly 
a  house  fronting  the  square  which  has  not 
served  as  a  home  for  some  of  the  men  and 
women  of  recent  fiction ;  hardly  a  club  in  which 
half  a  dozen  heroes  have  not  been  in  the  habit 
of  entering  with  the  easy  swing  of  old  member- 
ship. Here  again  is  0.  Henry  predominant. 
All  about  the  private  park  with  its  locked  gates 
are  the  severe  mansions  of  his  aristocrats.  A 
house  facing  the  west  side  of  the  park  was  un- 
questionably the  home  of  the  Von  der  Ruys- 
lings. That  illustrious  family  had  dwelt  there 
for  many  years.  In  fact,  in  a  spirit  of  obvious 
awe,  0.  Henry  imparted  the  information  that 

the  Von  der  Ruyslings  had  received  the  first 

222 


THE  COSMOPOLITAN  CITY,  VENICE 


223 


224  THE  NEW  YOEK 

key  ever  made  to  Gramercy  Park.  In  "The 
Marry  Month  of  May"  we  learn  that  near  the 
Park  old  Mr.  Coulson  had  a  house,  the  gout, 
half  a  million  dollars,  a  daughter,  and  a  house- 
keeper. It  was  the  daughter  who  thought  to 
chill  her  father's  springtime  ardour  by  the  in- 
troduction of  a  thousand  pounds  of  ice  into 
the  basement.  It  was  the  housekeeper  that 
thwarted  the  scheme  with  the  result  that  the 
old  millionaire  uttered  his  deferred  proposal, 
while  Miss  Van  Meeker  Constantia  Coulson  ran 
away  with  the  iceman. 

At  No.  1  Gramercy  Park  lived  Nan  Primrose 
of  Thomas  Dixon's  The  Root  of  Evil,  a  selec- 
tion of  residence  probably  due  to  the  fact  that 
the  author  at  one  time  had  his  own  home  in  the 
house.  No.  2  was  used  by  F.  Hopkinson  Smith 
as  the  residence  of  Mrs.  Leroy  in  Caleb  West. 
It  was  there  that  Caleb's  wife  found  a  refuge 
after  her  flight  with  Lally. 

The  Princeton  Club  on  the  north  side  at  the 
corner  of  Twenty-first  Street  and  Lexington 
Avenue  (the  old  Stanford  White  house)  was 
the  background  of  many  scenes  of  George  Barr 
McCutcheon's  The  Alternative,  and  was  also 


OF  THE  NOVELISTS  225 

used  by  Edgar  Saltus  in  The  Truth  About 
Tristrem  Varick.  The  adjacent  house  to  the 
west  was  the  home  of  Colonel  John  Gaunt  of 


THE  HOUSE  ON  GBAMEECY  PARK,  NORTH, 
USED  BY  BRANDER  MATTHEWS  IN 
"HER  LETTER  TO  HIS  SECOND  WIFE" 
AND  BY  OWEN  JOHNSON  IN  "AR- 
ROWS OF  THE  ALMIGHTY" 

Owen  Johnson's  Arrows  of  the  Almighty  when 
Gaunt  came  to  live  in  New  York  after  his  wife 
lost  her  mind,  and  also  the  scene  of  the  story 
"Her  Letter  to  His  Second  Wife"  in  Brander 


226  THE  NEW  YOEK 

Matthews 's  Vistas  of  New  York.  Fifty  years 
ago  that  house  belonged  to  George  T.  Strong. 
Mrs.  Strong  was  a  daughter  of  Samuel  B.  Bug- 
gies, the  founder  of  Gramercy  Park  and  Union 
Square.  Gramercy  was  derived  from  "Crow 
marcy"  meaning  "Crooked  brook."  There  is 
a  slab  to  Samuel  B.  Buggies  in  the  sidewalk  on 
the  west  side  of  the  park.  Directly  across  the 
square  to  the  south  is  another  club  closely  as- 
sociated with  Owen  Johnson's  stories  "Murder 
in  Any  Degree"  and  "One  Hundred  in  the 
Dark."  There,  as  of  yore,  foregather  Quinny, 
"gaunt  as  a  friar  of  the  Middle  Ages,"  and 
"the  genial  Steingal,  with  the  black-rimmed 
glasses,  the  military  moustaches,  and  the 
closely  cropped  beard,"  and  De  Golyer,  with 
his  epigrams,  his  incisive  mode  of  speech,  and 
his  military  click  of  the  heels. 

Nor,  in  touching  upon  the  club  land  that  lines 
the  southern  side  of  the  Square  should  the 
Siwash  Club  of  George  Fitch's  stories  be  ig- 
nored. It  was  there  that  Siwash  men  in  New 
York,  far  from  the  beloved  campus  somewhere 
in  the  Middle  West,  foregathered  to  discuss 
about  the  big  fireplace  the  great  team  of 


OF  THE  NOVELISTS  227 

Naughty  Six  and  the  various  exploits  of  Ole 
Skjarsen.  For  a  Siwash  man  there  were  few 
formalities  about  joining  that  club.  It  was 
simply  a  case  of  "Ten  Dollars  please  and  sign 
here." 


CHAPTER  VIII 

The  Heart  of  New  Arabia— The  City  as  the  Artists  See 
It — The  Bed  Line — Madison  Square — Union  Square— 
Stuffy  Pete's  Bench. 

WHEN  we  come  to  a  consideration  of  that  part 
of  the  trail  which  shall  be  designated  as  "Tea, 
Tango,  and  Toper  Land"  there  will  be  digres- 
sion in  the  shape  of  a  chapter  or  two  on  the 
New  York  of  the  Playwrights,  for  many  an  act 
of  melodrama  or  comedy  has  had  a  city  setting 
quite  as  definite  as  the  setting  of  a  novel  or 
short  tale.  So  while  we  are  in  New  Arabia  a 
few  words  should  be  said  of  the  artists  whose 
work  has  been  most  intimately  associated  with 
New  York,  for  many  of  them  have  found  direct 
inspiration  in  the  swaying  trees  of  the  great 
squares,  the  mingling  of  lights  and  shadows, 
and  the  vast  edifices  that  hedge  them  in.  For 
example,  who  has  better  interpreted  the  spirit 
of  springtime  in  Washington  Square  than  Wil- 
liam J.  Glackensf  In  one  page  he  tells  a  story 
that  three  thousand  words  of  descriptive  writ- 

228 


NEW  YOEK  OF  THE  NOVELISTS     229 

ing  can  merely  suggest.  You  see  the  Washing- 
ton Arch  and  the  aristocratic  north  side  of  the 
Square  beyond,  the  Fifth  Avenue  stage  with 
its  load  of  sightseers  on  top,  motor  cars,  pri- 
vate carriages,  deep  sea-going  hacks,  pedes- 
trians, policemen,  nurse  maids  and  their 
charges,  perambulating  lovers,  bicyclists,  dogs, 
cats,  and  above  all,  children  of  all  ages  and 
social  conditions — in  a  word,  nearly  every  ele- 
ment of  the  city's  complex  life.  And  every  one 
of  the  hundreds  of  figures  reflecting  late  April 
sunshine.  To  Joseph  Pennell  the  incredible, 
fairy  land  qualities  of  New  York  have  appealed 
as  insistently  as  they  did  to  O.  Henry.  To  him 
the  mountains  of  buildings  are  "mighty  cliffs, 
glittering  with  golden  stars  in  the  magic  and 
mystery  of  the  night."  "The  city,"  he  has 
written,  "is  finer  than  anything  in  any  world 
that  ever  existed,  finer  than  Claude  ever  imag- 
ined or  Turner  ever  dreamed.  Piling  up 
higher  and  higher  before  you,  it  reminds  one 
of  San  Ginuguano  of  the  Beautiful  Towers  in 
Tuscany,  only  here  are  not  eleven,  but  eleven 
times  eleven,  not  low,  brick  piles,  but  noble 
palaces,  crowned  with  gold,  with  green,  with 


230  THE  NEW  YOEK 

rose;  and  over  them  the  waving,  fluttering 
plume  of  steam,  the  emblem  of  New  York." 
And  to  the  names  of  Glackens  and  Pennell  can 
be  added  a  dozen  others,  those  of  men  who  had 
expressed  a  city  mood  or  staked  a  claim  to  a 
quarter.  In  a  magazine  article  by  Mr.  Louis 
Baury  the  various  messages  which  Manhattan 
conveyed  to  the  various  artists  were  very 
clearly  set  forth.  To  Everett  Shinn,  the  city 
said:  "I  suffer";  to  Colin  Campbell  Cooper: 
"I  sing";  to  Joseph  Pennell:  "I  work";  to 
Vernon  Howe  Bailey:  "I  soar";  to  John  Ed- 
ward Jackson:  "I  must  strive";  to  Childe 
Hassam:  "I  dream." 

According  to  the  impoverished  painter,  Sher- 
rard  Plumer,  picked  out  of  the  Bed  Line  to  suit 
the  whim  of  Carson  Chalmers,  as  told  in  "A 
Madison  Square  Arabian  Night,"  New  York 
is  as  full  of  cheap  Haroun  Al  Easchids  as  Bag- 
dad is  of  fleas.  The  men  in  the  Bed  Line  have 
come  to  know  them,  and  there  is  a  Union  rate 
by  which  the  certain  stock  stories  of  distress 
are  narrated  in  accordance  with  the  quantity 
and  quality  of  the  largesse  bestowed.  Chal- 
mers, being  a  munificent  giver,  was  rewarded 


ACROSS  THE  SQUARE   AND  THROUGH  THE  WHITE   ARCH  BOHEMIA   AND  PROLETAIRE 
GAZE   CURIOUSLY  AND  ENVIOUSLY  AT    BELGRAVIA 


OF  THE  NOVELISTS  231 

with  the  simple  and  curious  truth,  the  story  of 
that  strange  and  unfortunate  gift  which  made 
every  one  of  Plumer's  portraits  show  the  true 
inner  soul  of  the  subject.  In  a  dozen  other 
tales  Porter  showed  the  Bed  Liners  stamping 
their  freezing  feet  and  the  preacher  stand- 
ing on  a  pine  box  exhorting  his  transient  and 
shifting  audience.  In  the  Bed  Line  were 
Walter  Smuythe  and  the  discharged  coachman, 
Thomas  McQuade,  the  night  that  the  red  motor 
car  humming  up  Fifth  Avenue  lost  its  extra  tire 
as  narrated  in  "The  Fifth  Wheel."  It  was  on 
a  bench  of  the  Square  that  the  millionaire 
Pilkins  found  the  penniless  young  eloping 
couple  Marcus  Clayton  of  Eoanoke  County, 
Virginia,  and  Eva  Bedford  of  Bedford  County, 
of  the  same  State.  It  was  perhaps  on  the  same 
bench  that  Soapy  sat  meditating  just  what 
violation  of  the  law  would  insure  his  deporta- 
tion to  the  hospitable  purlieus  of  Blackwell's 
Island,  which  was  his  Palm  Beach  and  Eiviera 
for  the  winter  months.  It  was  nearby  at  least 
that  Prince  Michael,  of  the  Electorate  of  Valle 
Luna,  known  otherwise  as  Dopey  Mike,  looked 
up  at  the  clock  in  the  Metropolitan  Tower  and 


232  THE  NEW  YOEK 

gave  sage  advice  and  consolation  to  the  young 
man  who  was  waiting  to  learn  his  fate  as  told 
in  « <  The  Caliph,  Cupid,  and  the  Clock. ' '  While 
the  auto  with  the  white  body  and  the  red  run- 
ning gear  was  waiting  near  the  corner  of 
Twenty-sixth  Street  and  Fifth  Avenue,  Parken- 
stacker  made  the  acquaintance  of  the  girl  in 
grey  and  listened  to  the  strange  story  born  in 
the  pages  of  Eobert  Louis  Stevenson's  New 
Arabian  Nights.  Over  on  the  sidewalk  just  in 
front  of  the  Flatiron  building  Sam  Folwell  and 
Cal  Harkness,  the  Cumberland  feudists,  shook 
hands  " Squaring  the  Circle." 

In  following  the  trail  of  0.  Henry's  men  and 
women  through  Madison  Square  you  have  the 
choice  of  many  benches.  This  is  not  the  case 
when  Union  Square  is  introduced  in  the  story 
of  "Two  Thanksgiving  Day  Gentlemen." 
The  writer  tells  you  that  when  Stuffy  Pete 
went  to  the  Square  to  await  the  coming  of  the 
tall,  thin  old  gentleman  dressed  in  black  and 
wearing  the  old-fashioned  kind  of  glasses  that 
won't  stay  on  the  nose — the  old  gentleman  who 
had  been  Stuffy 's  host  every  Thanksgiving 
Day  for  nine  years — he  "took  his  seat  on  the 


OF  THE  NOVELISTS  233 

third  bench  to  the  right  as  you  enter  Union 
Square  from  the  east,  at  the  walk  opposite  the 
fountain."  Across  Union  Square  Hastings 
Beauchamp  Moreley  sauntered  with  a  pitying 
look  at  the  hundreds  that  lolled  upon  the  park 
benches  in  "The  Assessor  of  Success."  One 
evening  in  the  Square  Murray  and  the  dis- 
missed police  captain  Marony  were  sitting  side 
by  side  trying  to  think  of  schemes  to  repair 
their  fallen  fortunes.  When  opportunity  came 
both  acted  "According  to  their  Lights."  The 
captain  was  reduced  to  the  point  where,  to  use 
his  own  words,  he  would  "marry  the  Empress 
of  China  for  one  bowl  of  chop  suey,  commit 
murder  for  a  plate  of  beef  stew,  steal  a  wafer 
from  a  waif,  or  be  a  Mormon  for  a  bowl  of 
chowder."  But  his  code  of  honour  he  still  re- 
tained. He  would  not  "squeal." 


PAET  V 

TEA,  TANGO,  AND  TOPER  LAND 


CHAPTER  I 

The  Inns  of  Fiction— Mine  Host  of  Yesterday— The 
Trenchermen  Beyond  the  Magic  Door — A  Little  Dinner  in 
the  Land  of  Make  Believe. 

IN  the  course  of  this  rambling  pilgrimage  the 
reader  will  be  asked  to  step  into  an  astonishing 
number  of  hostelries,  inns,  refectories,  restau- 
rants, lobster  palaces,  or  whatever  is  the  poeti- 
cal or  practical  name  to  be  applied  to  those 
establishments  of  varying  degrees  of  elegance 
to  which  the  heroes  and  heroines  of  fiction  re- 
sort, ostensibly  for  food  or  drink,  but  in  reality 
to  give  the  author  himself  a  convenient  and 
congenial  background.  Mine  Host  himself  has 
become  a  less  prominent  figure  than  he  was  in 
the  novels  of  an  earlier  generation.  We  no 
longer  see  him  on  the  threshold,  rubbing  his 
hands,  scraping  his  effusive  welcome  to  the 
travellers,  protesting  the  quality  of  his  cuisine, 
service,  and  beds,  then  perhaps  slipping  away 
to  an  adjoining  room  to  drop  the  mask  of  pre- 
tended friendliness,  to  drug  the  wine,  or  to  pre- 


238  THE  NEW  YORK 

pare  the  ingenious  descending  bed  that  drops 
unsuspicious  victims  into  dungeon  or  oubliette. 
No.  M.  Terre,  who  kept  the  famous  tavern  in 
the  New  Street  of  the  Little  Fields — where  the 
bouillabaisse  came  from — has  become  a  corpo- 
ration, and  the  Maypole  Inn,  if  it  were  standing 
to-day,  would  very  probably  have  been  taken 
over  by  the  Great  Western  Railway,  with  the 
result  to  the  traveller,  of  more  substance  and 
less  romance. 

Already,  in  earlier  chapters,  we  have  heard 
much  of  the  rattling  of  knives  and  forks  and 
dishes.  We  have  lunched  at  Wasserbauer's 
with  Potash  and  Perlmutter,  at  Pontin's  with 
Artemas  Quibble  and  his  partner;  we  have  in- 
vaded the  near  Bohemia  of  Maria's,  Bene- 
detto's, Solari's,  and  kindred  restaurants  in  the 
neighbourhood  of  Washington  Square.  But  in 
the  city  to  the  south  eating  and  drinking  were 
incidental.  Crossing  the  threshold  of  Tea, 
Tango,  and  Toper  Land,  eating  and  drinking 
seemed  at  times,  deriving  impressions  from  the 
novelists,  to  be  life's  main  objects.  It  is  a  riot 
of  Rathskeller,  a  tumult  of  terrapin,  to  drop 
into  a  form  of  expression  imitative  of  O. 


OF  THE  NOVELISTS  239 

Henry.  But,  after  all,  why  not?  What  scenes 
in  fiction  cling  more  persistently  in  the  memory 
than  those  that  deal  with  the  satisfying  of 
man's  appetite?  Who  ever  heard  of  a  dys- 
peptic, hero?  Are  not  your  favourites  beyond 
the  Magic  Door  all  good  trenchermen?  Think 
of  the  groaning  board  of  Cedric,  the  Boar  of 
Kotherwood,  the  good  cheer  he  placed  before 
the  Templar  and  the  Prior — the  fowls,  deer, 
goats,  and  hares,  the  huge  loaves  and  cakes  of 
bread,  and  the  confections  made  of  fruits  and 
honey!  Or  of  the  hospitality  extended  by 
Friar  Tuck  to  the  Black  Knight  in  Sherwood 
Forest!  When  Dickens  wanted  to  place  the 
final  seal  of  happiness  upon  his  characters  he 
gathered  them  round  the  table,  and  there  is  no 
doubt  whatever  that  Old  Scrooge,  reformed  by 
the  visit  of  the  Fairies,  became  somewhat  of  a 
glutton,  whose  chief  delight  in  his  declining 
years  was  to  dine  and  wine  his  new  found  cro- 
nies at  certain  delectable  London  inns  noted  for 
their  haunches  of  venison  and  saddles  of  mut- 
ton. Athos,  Porthos,  Aramis,  and  d'Artagnan 
were  as  proficient  with  their  knives  and  forks 
— is  that  an  anachronism? — as  they  were  with 


240  THE  NEW  YOEK 

their  rapiers;  and  in  the  course  of  Les  Trois 
Mousquetaires,  Vingt  Ans  Apres,  and  Le  Vi- 
comte  de  Bragellone,  you  will  find  two  dinners 
to  every  duel.  So  in  imagination  the  pilgrim 
is  gathering  together  about  the  board  a  certain 
company,  and  confident  in  the  resources  of  the 
city  which  is  so  close  to  his  heart,  leaves  the 
selection  of  the  viands  and  beverages  to  the 
discretion  of  the  maitre  d 'hotel  of  the  Lafa- 
yette, or  the  Waldorf,  or  the  Knickerbocker, 
or  the  Beaux- Arts,  or  Sherry's,  or  Delmonico's, 
or  the  Vanderbilt,  or  the  Biltmore,  or  any  other 
establishment  that  happens  to  be  associated 
with  the  New  York  novel  of  the  moment. 

The  dinner,  as  originally  planned,  was  to 
have  been  of  some  thirty  odd  covers,  with  a 
heroine  to  the  right  and  left  of  the  host,  and 
a  heroine  before  every  second  plate  down  the 
table.  But  who,  in  that  case,  would  there  have 
been  to  preside  at  the  other  end  of  the  long 
board?  For  certainly  most  of  those  men  and 
women  of  the  Magic  Land  of  Make  Believe 
would  feel  just  a  little  out  of  place,  if  seated, 
partie  carre  fashion,  round  a  dozen  little  tables. 
So  perhaps,  after  all,  it  is  better  to  make  the 


OF  THE  NOVELISTS 


241 


dinner  strictly  a  stag  affair, — in  which  case  a 
club  private  dining-room  replaces  the  more 
pretentious  hostelry, — and  to  cancel  the  invi- 
tations that  had  been  addressed  to  Mrs.  Kaw- 
don  Crawley  (Curzon  Street,  W.),  The  Duchess 
of  Towers,  Mrs.  Arthur  Clenham  (nee  Little 
Dorrit),  Beatrix  Esmond,  Valerie  Marneffe, 


Thomas  Ncwcome 

Zagloba 

0 

o 

D'Amgoao 

o 

o 

George  Warrington 

Chewyble,  Cadet 

0 

o 

Colonel  Carter 

Martin  Dooley 

0 

0 

Squire  AJwortby 

Chtaot  the  Jester 

0 

0 

John  Oakhont 

Scrooge 

o 

o 

Jeff  Peters 

Rip  Van  Winkle 

o 

o 

Checrvbk,  Ainl 

Ptaon  Adams 

0 

0 

Tartarin 

PtwTock 

0 

0 

Colonel  Starbottle 

Portho. 

0 

o 

The  Black  Knight 

o 

The  Pilgrim 

242     NEW  YOEK  OF  THE  NOVELISTS 

Mrs.  Biever,  Mrs.  Clive  Newcome  (nee  Ethel 
Newcome),  Madame  Svengali,  Eugenie  Gran- 
det,  Jane  Eyre,  Mrs.  Hauksbee,  and  the  rest. 
In  which  event  the  gathering  at  the  table  will 
be  somewhat  as  shown  in  the  diagram  on  the 
preceding  page. 


CHAPTEE  II 

Doubling  on  the  Trail— "The  King  in  Yellow"— The  Blind 
Alleys  of  New  York — London  Terrace. 

ALTHOUGH  this  chapter  purports  to  deal  with 
those  regions  of  the  city  proper  to  Tea,  Tango, 
and  Toper  Land,  which  may  roughly  he  de- 
scribed as  covering  all  of  the  central  thor- 
oughfares of  the  Borough  of  Manhattan  from 
Madison  Square  north  to  Harlem,  the  Pilgrim, 
in  accordance  with  intimations  thrown  out  in 
the  course  of  previous  chapters,  is  taking  the 
liberty  of  retracing  his  steps.  So  behold  him 
once  again  in  the  neighbourhood  of  Washing- 
ton Square,  once  again  delving  into  the  jungle 
of  streets  that  constitute  Greenwich  Village. 
It  was  about  twenty  years  ago  that  Kobert  W. 
Chambers  staked  his  first  New  York  claim  with 
The  King  in  Yellow.  That  tale  dealt  with  the 
Square,  the  Square  of  other  days,  when  Mr. 
Chambers  himself  was  living  at  No.  60  South, 
when  the  old  University  building  was  there, 
and  the  huge,  ugly,  square  mountains  of  steel 

243 


244  THE  NEW  YOEK 

and  concrete  were  not,  and  when  in  West  Third 
Street,  one  block  to  the  south,  a  certain  kind 
of  wickedness  flaunted  itself  as  brazen  as  in 
the  "crib  alleys"  of  New  Orleans,  or  in  the 
old  San  Isidro  of  Havana.  Had  McAndrew, 
the  dour  Scotch  engineer  of  Kipling's  poem, 
found  his  way  along  the  narrow  thoroughfare 
from  lower  Sixth  Avenue  to  Sullivan  Street, 
where  the  Elevated,  overhead,  partly  hid 
worldly  iniquity  from  the  light  of  heaven,  there 
might  have  been  a  line  added  to 

Years  when  I  raked  the  ports  wi'  pride  to  fill  my  cup 

o'  wrong — 
Judge  not,  O  Lord,  my  steps  aside  at  Gay  Street  in 

Hong-Kong ! 
Blot  out  the  wastrel  hours  of  mine  in  sin  when  I 

abode — 
Jane  Harrigan's  an'  Number  Nine,  The  Reddick  an* 

Grant  Road ! 

No  wonder  the  spectacle  of  the  old  Square  con- 
jured up  in  the  story-teller's  mind  the  picture 
of  a  vast  lethal  chamber  where,  under  munici- 
pal supervision,  the  utterly  weary  and  the 
hopelessly  broken  might  pass  to  easy  rest.  A 
book  not  easily  forgotten,  The  King  in  Yellow. 
In  point  of  sheer  terror  equalling  Poe's  "The 


GRAMERCY  PARK,  SOUTH.  HERE  WERE  THE  SIWASH  CLUB  OF  THE  GEORGE  FITCH 
STORIES  AND  THE  CLUB  WHICH  SERVED  AS  A  BACKGROUND  FOR  OWEN  JOHN- 
SON'S "ONE,  HUNDRED  IN  THE  DARK,"  AND  "MURDER  IN  ANY  DEGREE" 


WASHINGTON  SQUARE  NORTH,  PEOPLED  BY  THE  GHOSTS  OF  COUNTLESS  ARISTO- 
CRATS OF  NEW  YORK  FICTION.  A  STURDY  BULWARK  THAT  SEEMS  DESTINED 
TO  REPEL  THE  INVADERS  FOR  YEARS  TO  COME.  TO  ESTABLISH  THE  RIGHT 
OF  A  HERO  OR  HEROINE  TO  A  PLACE  IN  THE  "SOCIAL  REGISTER"  IT  IS 
NECESSARY  ONLY  TO  CLAIM  A  RESIDENCE  HERE 


OF  THE  NOVELISTS  245 

Fall  of  the  House  of  Usher''  or  De  Maupas- 
sant's "Le  Horla."  The  memory  of  it  still 
haunts  after  all  the  years. 

The  apartment  house  in  The  King  in  Yellow 
known  as  The  Monastery  was  in  reality  The 
Benedick,  intimately  known  to  generations  of 
New  York  bachelors.  It  also  appeared  in  Mr. 
Chambers 's  Outsiders.  Then  there  was  the 
story  "The  Whisper."  The  scene  of  that  was 
laid  in  West  Third  Street  in  the  palmy  days 
alluded  to  when  the  thoroughfare  answered 
shamelessly  to  the  name  of  "Profligate's 
Lane."  Between  Macdougal  Street  and 
Greene  Street  was  a  dive  known  as  "Billy  the 
Oysterman's."  The  dominating  figure  of  the 
establishment  was  not  the  proprietor  himself, 
but  his  cat,  "Bed,"  introduced  in  the  tale. 
Billy  used  to  boast  of  "Bed"  as  the  only  cross- 
eyed cat  in  New  York.  In  "The  Whisper"  a 
murder  has  been  committed.  A  Chinaman  has 
been  arrested.  In  the  small  hours  of  the  morn- 
ing there  is  a  conference  of  the  newspaper  men 
who  have  been  assigned  to  the  case  at  Billy  the 
Oysterman's.  They  are  discussing  the  crime. 
A  Great  Dane  dog  that  had  belonged  to  the 


246  THE  NEW  YOEK 

murdered  girl  enters  and  stretches  himself  in 
his  usual  place.     One  of  the  reporters  gives 


THE  OPENING  THROUGH  WHICH  THE 
PEOPLE  WHO  LIVE  IN  MILLIKEN 
PLACE  REACH  THE  OUTSIDE  WORLD. 
SO  SMALL  IS  IT  THAT  ITS  DENIZENS 
MUST  SEEK  THE  ROOFTOPS  TO  SEE 
THE  JEFFERSON  MARKET  TOWER. 


expression  to  his  theory.    At  a  certain  point  in 
the  narrative,  and  at  the  mention  of  a  name, 


OF  THE  NOVELISTS 


247 


the  dog  manifests  a  strange  interest.     The  re- 
porter perceives  it.    He  leans  over  and  whis- 


'BEYOND  THE  GATE  LIES  MILLIKEIf 
PLACE,  A  TINY  TEIANGLE  SHUT  OFF 
FBOM  THE  SIGHT  IF  NOT  FROM 
THE  SOUND  OF  THE  CITY'S  TUMULT." 
BOBEET  W.  CHAMBEES'S  "THE  CASE 

OF  ME.  HELMEB" 

pers  something  in  the  dog's  ear,  then  turns  to 

the  door.    The  dog  rises  and  follows  him  out. 

As   a   rule   the  impasse,  or  blind   alley,  is 


248     NEW  YOEK  OF  THE  NOVELISTS 

rather  rare  in  New  York.  But  here  and  there 
may  be  found  one  as  quaint  as  any  that  appear 
in  the  London  novels  of  Dickens  or  the  Paris 
novels  of  Daudet.  For  example,  from  the 
northwest  corner  of  Washington  Square  walk 
north  two  blocks  to  Eighth  Street,  west  to  Sixth 
Avenue,  incidentally  passing,  if  you  are  taking 
the  southern  side  of  the  street,  the  opening  that 
leads  into  Clinton  Court,  north  to  Tenth  Street, 
and  then  cross  under  the  Elevated  at  a  slight 
diagonal.  Between  two  brick  structures  front- 
ing the  Avenue  there  is  a  gap  of  perhaps  five 
feet  and  a  wooden  gate.  Beyond  that  gate  lies 
Milliken  Place,  a  tiny  triangle  shut  off  from 
the  sight  if  not  from  the  sound  of  the  city's 
tumult.  High  above  looms  the  clock  tower  of 
the  Jefferson  Market  Police  Court.  But  so 
small  is  Milliken  Place,  so  shut  in  by  the  sur- 
rounding buildings,  that  its  denizens,  unless 
they  seek  the  world  without,  have  to  climb  to 
the  rooftops  for  a  glimpse  of  the  tower.  Mr. 
Chambers  made  use  of  Milliken  Place  in  "The 
Case  of  Mr.  Helmer."  It  was  there  that  the 
sculptor  Helmer  had  his  studio.  On  the  north 
side  of  West  Twenty-third  Street,  between 


249 


250    NEW  YOEK  OF  THE  NOVELISTS 

Ninth  and  Tenth  Avenues,  is  a  line  of  houses 
built  far  back  from  the  pavement,  with  protect- 
ing gardens  extending  in  front.  This  is  known 
as  London  Terrace.  Practically  unchanged,  it 
is  a  reminder  of  the  days  when  Chelsea,  which 
long  ago  ceased  to  have  an  identity,  was  really 
a  village.  In  one  of  the  Terrace  houses  Eobert 
W.  Chambers  found  a  home  for  Ailsa  Paige, 
the  heroine  of  his  Civil  War  novel  of  that  name. 
In  the  broad  street  in  front  of  Ailsa ,'s  house  a 
regiment  of  Zouaves,  departing  for  the  front, 
receives  its  colours. 


CHAPTER  III 

The  Later  Robert  W.  Chambers— The  Plaza  and  the  Park 
—The  Patroon  and  the  Pyramid— "lole." 

THE  Eobert  W.  Chambers  of  the  later  books, 
so  far  as  the  Borough  of  Manhattan  is  con- 
cerned, is  essentially  associated  with  the  vast 
expanse  of  city  which  comes  under  the  head  of 
Tea,  Tango,  and  Toper  Land — in  a  word  the 
great  hotels,  clubs,  and  theatres,  the  sweep  of 
Fifth  Avenue  from  Murray  Hill  to  the  Plaza, 
and  beyond  along  the  east  side  of  the  Park,  the 
Park  itself,  and  the  structures  that  line  the 
Eiverside  Drive.  This  is  the  social  New  York 
which  he  has  attempted  to  interpret  in  half  a 
score  of  successful  novels.  Stretching,  in  part, 
even  south  of  Murray  Hill  is  the  "  magic  coun- 
try of  brilliant  show  windows,  which,  like  an 
enchanted  city  by  itself,  sparkles  from  Madison 
Square  to  the  Plaza  between  Fourth  Avenue 
and  Broadway."  In  this  world  other  heroines 
besides  Geraldine  Seagrave  of  The  Danger 
Mark  were  lured  by  spectacular  charities  from 

251 


252  THE  NEW  YORK 

"the  Plaza  to  Sherry's,  and  from  Sherry's  tc 
the  St.  Regis."  Here  the  Chambers  men- 
about-town  dropped  into  the  Holland  House 
for  cocktails,  or  for  gossip  foregathered  in  the 
Patroon  Club,  which  is  as  obviously  the  Knick- 
erbocker Club  at  the  corner  of  Thirty-second 
Street  and  Fifth  Avenue  as  the  Pyramid  Glut 
of  the  novels  is  the  Century  Association  at  7 
West  Forty-third  Street.  Here  are  the  studios 
of  the  fashionable  painters  as  depicted  in  The 
Common  Law. 

But  in  these  days  it  behooves  the  novelist  tc 
proceed  with  discretion,  lest  he  bring  upon  him- 
self the  odious  charge  of  writing  a  clef.  So 
while  hotel,  and  restaurant,  and  theatre,  and 
club  may  be  regarded  as  legitimate  settings  of 
the  scene,  the  question  of  a  private  residence 
is  always  a  ticklish  one.  "You  would  think," 
said  Mr.  Chambers,  "that  there  would  be 
safety  in  a  vacant  lot.  That  there  would  be 
perfect  security  in  finding  a  corner  of  unoccu- 
pied ground  at,  let  us  say,  Fifth  Avenue  and 
Ninety-fifth  Street,  and  there  building  on  paper 
a  structure  that,  in  architecture  and  decora- 
tion, would  be  an  expression  of  your  hero  and 


OF  THE  NOVELISTS  253 

heroine,  or  an  expression  of  their  forebears. 
But  even  in  that  direction  danger  may  lurk." 
A  point  which  he  illustrated  by  a  story  that 
shall  not  be  told  here.  Through  the  Park  there 
are  countless  strolls  by  the  men  and  women  of 
Mr.  Chambers 's  book.  In  one  novel  it  will  be 
The  Mall  that  is  introduced,  in  a  second  the 
Bridle  Path,  in  a  third  the  Eamble,  in  a  fourth 
the  Wistaria  Arbour  that  lies  to  the  south  and 
west  of  The  Mall.  This  taking  his  heroes  and 
heroines  so  often  through  the  Park  is  a  reflec- 
tion of  the  novelist's  own  love  and  his  inherited 
love  for  it.  Keen  as  his  delight  has  been  in 
Paris 's  Bois  de  Boulogne,  and  London's  Re- 
gent's Park,  it  is  the  Central  Park  of  his  own 
New  York  that  lies  nearest  to  his  heart. 

Here,  in  a  nutshell,  is  a  survey  of  the  Robert 
W.  Chambers'  New  York  as  it  is  reflected  in 
certain  of  his  novels  and  short  stories.  "The 
Princess  Zim-bam-Zim"  touches  Madison 
Square,  West  Twenty-seventh  Street,  and  the 
Pennsylvania  Railroad  Station.  "The  Story 
of  Valdez"  is  laid  in  the  galleries  of  the  Ameri- 
can Art  Association  on  Madison  Square  South. 
The  Green  Mouse  introduces  Central  Park  and 


254  THE  NEW  YOEK 

a  building  that  is  identified  as  number  1008 
Fifth  Avenue.  The  house  and  back  yard  of 
number  161  East  Sixty-fourth  Street  are  the 
settings  of  "In  Heaven  and  Earth. "  The 
Tree  of  Heaven  deals  with  lower  Fifth  Avenue 
and  St.  Patrick's  Cathedral,  and  "The  Tree  of 
Dreams"  with  certain  model  tenement  build- 
ings on  the  East  Side.  In  "Out  of  the 
Depths"  there  is  a  scene  at  the  old  Calumet 
Club  on  Fifth  Avenue.  East  Eiver  Park  plays 
a  part  in  "An  Overdose."  In  Central  Park 
and  along  Fifth  Avenue  are  the  scenes  of  The 
Tracer  of  Lost  Persons.  "The  Case  of  Mr. 
Garden"  deals  definitely  with  the  Eamble  in 
Central  Park.  In  The  Adventures  of  a  Modest 
Man,  The  Green  Mouse,  "A  Matter  of  Inter- 
est," and  "Diana's  Choice"  there  are  scenes 
in  Oyster  Bay,  South  Oyster  Bay,  Jamaica,  and 
along  the  Bronx  Eiver.  But  these  stories  will 
come  up  for  discussion  later,  as  they  belong  to 
the  division  of  the  volume  called  "The  City 
Beyond." 

There  was  one  book  by  Mr.  Chambers — inci- 
dentally the  scene  of  it  was  placed  definitely  at 
the  southwest  corner  of  Madison  Avenue  and 


OF  THE  NOVELISTS  255 

Seventieth  Street,  where  there  was  no  house 
nor  was  there  likely  to  be  one  for  the  reason 
that  the  land  was  the  property  of  the  Lenox 
Library — that  was  the  subject  of  wide  contro- 
versy at  the  time  of  its  appearance,  because  its 
hero  was  generally  accepted  as  being  modelled 
upon  a  very  much  exploited  personality.  That 
book  was  lole.  "How  furious  So  and  So  will 
be  when  he  reads  it,"  said  people,  referring  to 
the  supposed  victim  of  the  lampoon.  So  and 
So  was  quick  to  recognise  the  resemblance. 
But  the  emotion  aroused  was  neither  anger  nor 
annoyance,  but  sheer,  unadulterated  delight, 
to  which  he  gave  free  expression  in  a  letter  to 
the  novelist.  The  book  had  served  to  turn  in 
his  direction  a  great  deal  more  of  the  warm 
limelight  in  which  he  so  loved  to  bask.  Yet, 
very  curiously,  it  was  not  the  Sage  of  that  town 
in  northwestern  New  York  that  Mr.  Chambers 
had  in  his  mind  at  all  when  he  wrote  lole.  The 
model  was  not  even  an  American  model.  It 
was  French.  Over  in  Paris,  Aristide  Bruant, 
long-haired,  bull-throated,  gesticulating,  was 
declaiming  his  verses  from  the  tops  of  cafe 
tables.  In  him  were  embodied  all  the  physical 


256    NEW  YOEK  OF  THE  NOVELISTS 

characteristics  needed  for  the  character.  Fur- 
thermore, at  Bruant's  heels  followed  a  score 
of  satellites,  for  at  that  particular  time  Paris 
was  full  of  those  idle,  thundering  fakers. 
What  induced  Mr.  Chambers  to  mix  his  hero 
up  with  the  slab  furniture  business — the  touch 
that  was  supposed  to  sweep  away  the  last  ves- 
tige of  doubt — was  merely  his  own  intense 
aversion  to  slab  furniture. 


CHAPTER  IV 

The  Berkeley— Old  Delmonieo's— The  Manhattan  Club- 
Poverty  Flat. 

OF  recent  years  Madison  Square  seems  to  have 
an  influence  over  the  novelists  of  New  York 
something  akin  to  that  so  long  wielded  by  the 
trees  and  asphalt  of  Washington  Square. 
There  is  in  the  turmoil,  the  light,  the  rush  of 
the  former  something  very  typical  of  New 
York  life.  The  tall  tower  of  the  Garden  yes- 
terday looming  high  over  the  adjacent  struc- 
tures, but  to-day  dwarfed  by  its  big  brother  of 
the  Metropolitan  Building,  has  afforded  our 
writers  an  inspiration,  which  they  occasionally 
use  with  singular  felicity.  The  tower  is  one  of 
the  staple  subjects  of  conversation  of  Mr. 
Davis 's  heroes  and  heroines  when  they  happen 
to  be  in  South  America  or  Tangier — or  on 
board  steamers  in  the  South  Atlantic — any 
place  sufficiently  distant  from  New  York.  The 
hero  of  one  of  Brander  Matthews 's  Vignettes 
of  Manhattan,  the  failure  in  life,  pointed  out  of 

257 


258 


THE  NEW  YOEK 


Delmonico's  windows — when  Delmonico's  was 
at  Twenty-sixth  Street  and  Fifth  Avenue — and 
confessed  to  his  friend  of  the  old  college  days 
that  he  would  die  out  of  sight  of  that  tower. 


GEOBGE  BABB  MC  CTJTCHEON  FOUND  A 
NEW  YORK  BESIDENCE  FOB  MONTY 
BBEWSTEB 


Many  of  the  old  landmarks  that  have  passed 
away  in  recent  years  were  linked  with  the 
Square's  associations  in  earlier  fiction.  Long 
before  the  idea  of  the  huge  garden  was  ever 


OF  THE  NOVELISTS  259 

conceived  the  old  Brunswick  served  as  the 
scene  of  many  of  the  episodes  of  Mr.  Fawcett's 
novels.  On  Fifth  Avenue,  a  little  below  the 
Square,  in  the  heart  of  what  was  until  a  few 
years  ago  the  publishing  district,  and  what  is 
now  the  realm  of  Potash  and  Perlmutter,  lived 
the  Satterthwaites  of  his  Olivia  Delaplaine. 

Across  the  city,  at  Twenty-sixth  Street  and 
the  East  Eiver,  Hamilton  Knox  (J.  L.  Wil- 
liams 's  "The  Cub  Keporter  and  the  King  of 
Spain' ')  used  to  dangle  his  feet  over  the  water 
and  watch  the  incoming  ferryboats  while  wait- 
ing for  Morgue  news.  There  has  been  among 
college  men,  especially  among  Princeton  men, 
considerable  speculation  as  to  the  identity  of 
Hamilton  Knox.  Hamilton  Knox  was  drawn 
from  Frank  Morse,  the  Princeton  half-back  of 
the  1893  Eleven. 

Two  blocks  to  the  north,  on  the  southeast 
corner  of  the  avenue  and  Twenty-eighth  Street, 
is  the  "Berkeley  Flats,"  described  by  Eichard 
Harding  Davis  in  Her  First  Appearance.  It 
was  here  that  the  irrepressible  Van  Bibber 
brought  the  little  girl  whose  acquaintance  he 
had  made  two  hours  before  in  the  theatre 


260  THE  NEW  YOEK 

green-room.  The  apartment  of  Carruthers 
must  have  been  in  one  of  the  upper  stories  of 
the  building,  for  Mr.  Davis  speaks  of  Van  Bib- 
ber looking  out  through  the  window  and  down 
upon  the  lights  of  Madison  Square  and  the 
boats  in  the  East  Eiver.  This  story  was  writ- 
ten by  Mr.  Davis  in  Twenty-eighth  Street,  only 
a  stone's  throw  from  the  " Berkeley, "  and  the 
illustrations  which  accompanied  the  story  were 
drawn  from  one  of  the  "  Berkeley "  apart- 
ments. Eeturning  to  Madison  Square,  the 
Garden  Theatre  was  introduced  in  one  of 
Brander  Matthews 's  Vignettes  of  Manhattan. 
It  was  there  that  John  Stone,  the  naval  officer, 
and  Clay  Magruder,  the  cowboy,  saw  Patience 
the  night  before  the  burning  of  the  hotel  where 
they  were  staying.  The  "Apollo"  Hotel  men- 
tioned in  so  many  of  Professor  Matthews 's 
sketches  and  stories  of  New  York  life  was 
drawn  from  the  Belvidere  Hotel,  at  Eighteenth 
Street  and  Fourth  Avenue.  At  Number  5  East 
Twenty-ninth  Street  is  the  Church  of  the 
Transfiguration,  better  known  as  "The  Little 
Church  Around  the  Corner."  It  was  there 
that  Van  Bibber,  acting  as  "Best  Man,"  sent 


OF  THE  NOVELISTS  261 

the  young  eloping  couple  whom  he  had  found 
dining  on  the  Terrace  at  the  Hotel  Martin. 
Brander  Matthews  calls  it  "The  Little  Church 
Down  the  Street,"  and  makes  it  the  scene  and 
the  raison  d'etre  of  his  most  characteristic  tale 
— the  story  of  the  actor's  funeral,  with  its 
blood-red  climax,  the  bearers  passing  stolidly 
down  the  aisle  unconsciously  heedless  of  "the 
dry-eyed  mother  of  the  dead  man's  unborn 
child."  The  curious  arched  entrance  at  the 
street  gate  was  erected  in  after  years  and  was 
of  course  not  mentioned  by  Professor  Matthews 
in  his  graphic  description  of  the  church.  Cross- 
ing the  avenue,  we  find,  at  the  corner  of  Thirty- 
fourth  Street,  the  building  of  the  Knickerbocker 
Trust  Company.  Once,  on  the  site,  stood  the 
old  Stewart  mansion,  which  in  its  later  years 
was  the  home  of  the  Manhattan  Club.  It  was 
there  that  was  held  the  meeting  which  resulted 
in  the  nomination  of  the  Honourable  Peter  Stir- 
ling for  the  governorship  of  New  York. 

On  the  north  side  of  Thirty-third  Street,  a 
few  doors  west  of  Sixth  Avenue,  was  formerly 
the  Cayuga  Flat  which,  under  the  name  of 
"Poverty  Flat,"  figured  in  many  of  James  L. 


THE  HOUSE  OF  RICHARD  HARDING  DAVIS'S 
"VERA  THE  MEDIUM"  WAS  ON  THE 
SOUTH  SIDE  OP  WEST  THIRTY-FIFTH 
STREET,  NEAR  SIXTH  AVENUE  AND 
DIRECTLY  OPPOSITE  THE  GARRICK 
THEATRE.  THIS  NEIGHBOURHOOD  HAS 
UNDERGONE  A  REMARKABLE  TRANS- 
FORMATION IN  THE  COURSE  OF  THE 
PAST  TEN  YEARS 


NEW  YORK  OF  THE  NOVELISTS     263 

Ford's  short,  satiric  studies  of  New  York  life. 
In  the  Cayuga  took  place  "A  Dinner  in  Pov- 
erty Flat,"  and  it  was  the  scene  of  many  of  the 
exploits  of  the  amiable  Police  Captain  Fatwal- 
let.  The  hero  of  Richard  Harding  Davis 's  "A 
Walk  Up  the  Avenue "  having  broken  with  his 
fiancee,  approaching  the  hill  at  Thirtieth  Street 
was  filled  with  satisfaction  at  the  thought 
of  his  new-found  freedom.  At  Thirty-second 
Street  this  satisfaction  was  changed  to  discon- 
tent. By  the  time  he  was  passing  the  Reser- 
voir at  Forty-second  Street — which  made  way 
for  the  Public  Library — he  had  made  up  his 
mind  that  he  would  always  remain  a  bachelor. 
The  sight  of  the  tall  white  towers  of  the  Ca- 
thedral at  Fiftieth  Street  looming  up  before  him 
made  him  think  with  a  great,  wistful  sadness 
of  his  meeting  her  some  time  in  the  far  distant 
future.  At  the  entrance  to  the  Park  came  re- 
morse, meeting  and  reconciliation. 


CHAPTER  V 

"The  Avenue"— The  Old  Curiosity  Shop  of  "Felix  O'Day" 
—The  Suicide  of  a  Street. 

IMAGINE  a  man  had  inherited  New  York,  who 
from  early  childhood  to  boyhood,  and  from 
boyhood  to  manhood,  had  seen  its  amazing 
growth,  returning  to  it  to-day  after  a  continu- 
ous absence  of  fifteen  or  twenty  years.  Pic- 
ture him  on  the  deck  of  a  steamer  coming 
through  the  Inner  Bay,  staring  at  the  altered 
sky-line,  being  whirled  northward  from  the 
landing  pier  through  a  labyrinth  of  streets  in 
a  taxicab,  and  finally,  having  found  a  tempo- 
rary home  in  one  of  the  new  hotels  in  the  neigh- 
bourhood of  Forty-second  Street,  starting  out 
on  foot  to  survey  a  city  that  would  be  at  once 
a  stranger  and  an  old  friend.  Of  all  the  trans- 
formations that  would  meet  his  eyes,  the  one 
that  would  probably  seem  to  him  the  most  mar- 
vellous, the  one  most  likely  to  move  him  to  say: 
"Mere  man  cannot  have  wrought  all  this. 
Surely,  here  is  where  Aladdin  rubbed  the  Won- 

264 


NEW  YOEK  OF  THE  NOVELISTS     265 

derful  Lamp,"  would  be  that  which  has 
changed  the  old  Fourth  Avenue  to  the  new. 
"The  Avenue"  it  used  to  be  to  its  denizens  of 
a  decade  ago,  just  as  the  parallel  thoroughfare 
two  blocks  to  the  west  is  "The  Avenue"  to 
those  of  more  aristocratic  tastes  and  associa- 
tions. But  whether  it  be  regarded  as  the  lane 
of  the  mediaeval  solitude  of  yesterday,  or  the 
lane  of  the  silent  and  terrible  mountains  of  to- 
day, it  can  be  traversed  best,  within  the  com- 
pass of  these  articles,  in  the  company  of  the 
amiable  shades  of  F.  Hopkinson  Smith  and  of 
William  Sidney  Porter. 

In  the  writing  of  Felix  O'Day  the  creator  of 
Colonel  Carter  avowedly  attempted  a  novel  of 
New  York  life  that  was  to  have  something  of 
the  flavour  of  Dickens.  For  direct  inspiration 
he  went  to  mouldy  stones  and  broken  pave- 
ments. The  task  took  him  to  many  corners  of 
the  city,  to  the  old  Studio  Building  on  West 
Tenth  Street,  to  Gramercy  Park,  where  "the 
almanac  goes  to  pieces  and  everything  is  ahead 
of  time,"  to  Dover  Street,  that  short  cut  along 
the  abutment  of  the  great -bridge,  with  its  nar- 
row, uneven  sidewalk,  and  its  shambling  hovels 


266  THE  NEW  YOEK 

and  warehouses,  to  St.  Mark's  Place,  and  to 
Greenwich  Village.  But  the  picture  that  re- 
mains longest  in  the  mind  is  that  of  *  '  The  Ave- 
nue," between  Madison  Square  and  the  tunnel, 
which  was  "a  little  city  in  itself."  In  this  city 
lived  Bundleton,  the  grocer ;  Heff ern,  the  dairy- 
man; Porterfield,  the  butcher;  Codman,  the 
fishmonger;  Pestler,  the  apothecary;  Jarvis, 
the  spectacle  man;  Sanderson,  the  florist;  Dig- 
well,  the  undertaker;  Jacobs,  the  tailor,  and 
above  all  Otto  Kling  of  the  old  curiosity  shop 
in  which  Felix  O'Day  found  occupation.  But 
they  are  all  gone  now.  To  quote  Mr.  Smith's 
words : 

Hardly  a  trace  is  now  left  of  any  of  them,  so  sudden 
and  overwhelming  has  been  the  march  of  modern 
progress.  Even  the  little  Peter  Cooper  house,  picked 
up  bodily  by  that  worthy  philanthropist  and  set  down 
here  nearly  a  hundred  years  ago,  is  gone,  and  so  are 
the  row  of  musty,  red-bricked  houses  at  the  lower  end 
of  this  Little  City  in  Itself.  And  so  are  the  tenants 
of  this  musty  old  row,  shady  locksmiths  with  a  tend- 
ency toward  skeleton  keys ;  ingenious  upholsterers  who 
indulged  in  paper-hanging  on  the  sly ;  shoemakers  who 
did  half -soling  and  heeling,  their  day's  work  set  to 
dry  on  the  window-sill,  not  to  mention  those  addicted 
to  the  use  of  the  piano,  banjo,  or  harp,  as  well  as  the 


OF  THE  NOVELISTS  267 

wig  and  dress  makers  who  lightened  the  general  gloom. 
And  with  the  disappearance  of  these  old  landmarks — 
and  it  all  took  place  within  less  than  ten  years — there 
disappeared,  also,  the  old  family  life  of  "The  Ave- 
nue," in  which  each  home  shared  in  the  good-fellow- 
ship of  the  whole,  all  of  them  contributing  to  that  sane 
and  sustaining  stratum,  if  we  did  but  know  it,  of  our 
civic  structure — facts  that  but  few  New  Yorkers  either 
recognise  or  value. 

The  shop  of  Otto  Kling  was  very  definitely 
described  and  placed.  When  O'Day,  leaving 
the  theatre  district,  walked  eastward  along 
Thirtieth  Street,  he  saw,  when  reaching  Fourth 
Avenue,  a  lighted  window,  a  wide,  corner  win- 
dow filled  with  battered  furniture,  ill  assorted 
china,  and  dented  brass — one  of  those  popular 
morgues  that  house  the  remains  of  decayed  re- 
spectability. On  a  card  propped  against  a 
broken  pitcher  was  printed:  "Choice  Articles 
Bought  and  Sold — Advances  Made."  The 
number  of  the  building  was  445.  The  visitor 
to  this  section  of  the  city  to-day  will  find  many 
antique  shops  similar  to  that  of  Otto  Kling; 
but  he  will  not  find  Kling 's.  Six  or  seven 
years  ago  the  building  that  stood  at  the  north- 
east corner  of  Fourth  Avenue  and  Thirtieth 


268  THE  NEW  YOEK 

Street  was  demolished.  With  it  went  several 
other  buildings  that  stretched  along  the  avenue 
half  way  to  Thirty-first  Street.  On  the  site 
was  erected  a  tall  modern  structure,  covering 
the  numbers  from  443  to  449.  That  building 
happens  to  be  the  building  of  the  publishing 
house  which  gives  its  imprint  to  this  book.  To 
all  practical  purposes  these  lines  of  description 
are  being  written  on  the  exact  spot  of  the 
labours  of  Felix  O'Day,  of  Otto  Kling,  and  of 
his  daughter  Masie. 

Then  there  was  the  Fourth  Avenue  of  yester- 
day that  has  been  preserved,  for  coming  gen- 
erations let  us  hope,  in  the  stories  of  0.  Henry. 
Partly  because  it  was  convenient  to  his  various 
domiciles  in  New  York,  and  partly  because  of 
its  quaint  picturesqueness,  Porter  adored  it. 
In  half  a  dozen  tales  he  played  whimsically 
upon  its  contrasts.  Perhaps  it  would  seem  at 
its  best  through  the  medium  of  "A  Bird  of 
Bagdad. "  There  it  was  pictured  as  a  street 
that  the  city  seemed  to  have  forgotten  in  its 
growth,  a  street,  born  and  bred  in  the  Bowery, 
staggering  northward  full  of  good  resolutions. 
At  Fourteenth  Street  "it  struts  for  a  brief  mo- 


OF  THE  NOVELISTS  269 

ment  proudly  in  the  glare  of  the  museums  and 
cheap  theatres.  It  may  yet  become  a  fit  mate 
for  its  high-born  sister  boulevard  to  the  west, 
or  its  roaring,  polyglot,  broadwaisted  cousin  to 
the  east."  Then  it  passes  what  O.  Henry  in 
"The  Gold  That  Glittered "  called  "the  square 
presided  over  by  George  the  Veracious,'7  and 
comes  to  the  silent  and  terrible  mountains, 
buildings  square  as  forts,  high  as  the  clouds, 
shutting  out  the  sky,  where  thousands  of  slaves 
bend  over  desks  all  day.  Next  it  glides  into  a 
mediaeval  solitude.  On  each  side  are  the  shops 
devoted  to  antiques.  "Men  in  rusting  armour 
stand  in  the  windows  and  menace  the  hurrying 
cars  with  raised,  rusty  iron  bumpers,  hauberks 
and  helms,  blunderbusses,  Cromwellian  breast- 
plates, matchlocks,  creeses,  and  the  swords  and 
daggers  of  an  army  of  dead  and  gone  gallants 
gleam  dully  in  the  ghostly  light. "  This  medi- 
aeval solitude  forebodes  an  early  demise.  What 
street  could  live  enclosed  by  these  mortuary 
relics  and  trod  by  these  spectral  citizens? 
"Not  Fourth  Avenue.  Not  after  the  tinsel  but 
enlivening  glory  of  the  Little  Eialto — not  after 
the  echoing  drum  beats  of  Union  Square. 


270     NEW  YORK  OF  THE  NOVELISTS 

There  need  be  no  tears,  ladies  and  gentlemen. 
'Tis  but  the  suicide  of  a  street.    With  a  shriek 


"WITH  A  CRASH  AND  A  SHRIEK  FOURTH 
AVENUE  DIVES  HEADLONG  INTO  THE 
TUNNEL  AT  THIRTY-FOURTH  STREET 
AND  IS  NEVER  SEEN  AGAIN."  O. 
HENRY'S  "A  BIRD  OF  BAGDAD" 

and  a  crash  Fourth  Avenue  dives  headlong  into 
the  tunnel  at  Thirty-fourth  Street  and  is  never 
seen  again." 


CHAPTER  VI 

Concerning  the  Town  of  the  Playwright — "The  Charity 
Ball"— "The  Old  Homestead"— Clyde  Fitch's  New  York. 

ALREADY  in  these  pages  has  been  told  the  story 
of  the  care  with  which  the  late  F.  Hopkinson 
Smith,  when  the  stage  presentation  of  Colonel 
Carter  of  Cartersville  was  in  the  making, 
piloted  the  scenic  artist  through  the  old,  rickety 
wooden  structure  in  the  rear  of  number  58 
West  Tenth  Street,  in  order  that  theatregoers 
might  see  the  Colonel's  dining-room  just  as  the 
author  had  seen  it  when  he  was  writing  the 
story.  Which  suggests  that  there  is  a  New 
York  of  the  playwright,  just  as  definite,  even 
if  more  limited  in  scope,  as  the  New  York  of 
the  novelist.  As  a  small  boy  the  Pilgrim  first 
saw  The  Old  Homestead.  It  was,  he  thinks,  at 
the  Fourteenth  Street  theatre  of  other  days. 
Very  little  of  the  plot  remains  in  the  memory, 
if  there  ever  was  any  plot  to  speak  of,  but 
sharp  and  clear  stands  out  that  picture  of 
Grace  Church,  and  again  he  hears  the  notes  of 

271 


272  THE  NEW  YOEK 

the  organ,  and  sees  the  lighted  windows  and 
the  iron  palings,  and  the  pedestrians  on  Broad- 
way passing  across  the  stage  in  the  falling 
snow.  It  must  have  been  Christmas  Eve,  for 
a  scene  like  this  on  the  stage  is  always  Christ- 
mas Eve,  unless  it  be  Thanksgiving  Day  night 
in  front  of  the  church  in  a  New  England  vil- 
lage. Then,  to  revert  again  to  personal  remi- 
niscence, there  were  the  impressionable  teen 
years,  when  the  old  Lyceum  Theatre  on  Fourth 
Avenue  was  a  source  of  never  failing  joy.  The 
world  was  young  then,  and  the  ladies  of  the 
stage  were  houris  to  be  worshipped  ardently 
but  bashfully  across  the  footlights.  What  a 
long  line  of  plays  the  present  Pilgrim  wit- 
nessed there !  How  many  of  them  there  were 
that  reflected  the  New  York  of  the  period! 
Who  that  saw  them  can  have  forgotten  The 
Charity  Ball,  or  Merry  Gotham,  or  The  Moth 
and  the  Flame,  or  The  Woman  in  the  Case,  or 
Captain  Jinks  of  the  Horse  Marines?  The 
first  act  of  the  last  named  piece  showed  the 
New  York  landing  dock  of  the  Cunard  Line. 
It  was  a  very  different  scene  from  the  dock  in 
the  Chelsea  Piers  of  to-day,  for  the  action  of 


OF  THE  NOVELISTS  273 

the  play  was  supposed  to  take  place  in  the 
early  seventies.  In  the  background  was  the 
grey  river,  with  Hoboken  in  the  distance,  and 
the  great  house  on  the  hill.  Then  in  the  sec- 
ond and  third  acts  the  actions  shifted  to  a  par- 
lour in  the  Brevoort  House  as  it  was  in  the 
heyday  of  its  aristocratic  prosperity.  In  The 
Woman  in  the  Case  there  was  an  act  in  the 
visitors'  room  of  the  Tombs  Prison,  and  an- 
other in  a  flat  in  West  Fifty-second  Street.  It 
was  the  drawing-room  of  a  New  York  residence 
that  served  as  the  background  for  the  trag- 
ically ending  first  act  of  The  Moth  and  the 
Flame,  and  it  was  at  the  altar  of  a  New  York 
church  that  the  moth  and  the  flame  came  to  a 
final  parting  of  the  ways.  Other  plays  by 
Clyde  Fitch,  such  as  The  Climbers,  The  Truth, 
The  City,  The  Girl  with  the  Green  Eyes,  and 
The  Stubbornness  of  Geraldine  probably  came 
later,  but  they  were  all,  in  part  at  least,  dis- 
tinctly of  New  York.  And  Fitch  was  merely 
one  of  a  number.  The  same  may  be  said  of  a 
score  of  playwrights  who  have  been  busy  in  the 
last  two  decades  providing  amusement  for 
American  theatregoers. 


THE  COSMOPOLITAN  CITY,  LONDON 


274 


NEW  YORK  OF  THE  NOVELISTS     275 

But  of  the  older  plays  there  was  none  that, 
to  the  memory  of  the  Pilgrim,  suggested  and 
reflected  the  city  more  than  The  Charity  Ball, 
which  was  the  joint  work  of  David  Belasco  and 
of  Henry  C.  DeMille.  First  there  was  the 
scene  in  the  chancel  of  Grace  Church.  The 
great  scene  was  staged  in  an  angle  of  the  stair- 
case of  the  Metropolitan  Opera  House  on  the 
night  of  the  ball.  It  was  placed  there  because 
Mr.  Daniel  Frohman,  who  was  the  producing 
manager,  felt  that  there  was  only  one  title  to 
be  used.  It  was  not  a  matter  of  choice,  but  of 
expediency.  "The  Charity  Ball,"  said  Mr. 
Frohman,  discussing  that  play  reminiscently  a 
few  weeks  ago,  "was  what  the  play  had  to  be 
called.  Everybody  in  New  York  knew  about 
it,  throughout  the  country  everywhere  people 
had  heard  of  it.  The  play  was  strong  enough 
to  stand  by  itself,  but  to  insure  success  before 
the  audience  some  means  had  to  be  found  of 
justifying  the  use  of  the  title.  The  scene  itself 
naturally  fitted  a  private  house.  But  for  The 
Charity  Ball  we  had  to  introduce  the  old  Metro- 
politan Opera  House  where  the  ball  took  place. 
Finally,  we  hit  upon  that  angle  of  the  landing 


276     NEW  YOEK  OF  THE  NOVELISTS 

where  crowds  do  not  linger,  where  the  princi- 
pal characters  might  meet  and  the  action  pro- 
ceed logically  without  interruption. " 


CHAPTEE  VH 

The  Department  Store  in  Fiction — Montague  Glass — 
Edna  Ferber— Samuel  Merwin's  "The  Honey  Bee"— The 
Shop  Girls  of  0.  Henry. 

WHEN,  in  the  course  of  the  Bougon-Macquart 
novels,  Emile  Zola  reached  the  department 
store  as  a  phase  reflecting  Parisian  life,  read- 
ers were  divided  in  their  opinions  as  to  the 
exact  model  from  which  Au  Bonheur  des  Dames 
had  been  drawn.  Furthermore  there  seemed 
to  be  no  agreement  as  to  the  particular  section 
of  the  city  in  which  it  was  situated,  some  find- 
ing the  original  in  the  Bon  Marche  far  over  on 
the  left  bank  of  the  Seine,  while  others  identi- 
fied it  with  one  or  another  of  the  great  shops 
about  the  boulevards  near  the  Opera.  So, 
when,  in  New  York  fiction,  you  come  to  a  ref- 
erence to  the  " Biggest  Store"  you  are  usually 
at  a  loss  as  to  whether  one  is  meant  that  is 
on  lower  Sixth  Avenue,  or  on  Thirty-fourth 
Street,  or  in  the  fashionable  part  of  Fifth  Ave- 

277 


278  THE  NEW  YORK 

nue,  or  over  on  the  East  Side.  But  wherever 
it  may  be,  while  we  are  on  the  way  there,  it  may 
not  be  amiss  to  stop  for  a  brief  moment  in  the 
wholesale  clothing  district,  which,  of  recent 
years,  has  been  moving  uptown,  and  now  cen- 
tres about  Fifth  Avenue  and  Twentieth  Street, 
There,  first  of  all,  will  be  found  the  familiar 
figures  of  Montague  Glass's  Abe  Potash  and 
Mawruss  Perlmutter,  for  it  was  purely  for 
ephemeral  purposes  of  the  stage  that  the  part- 
ners allowed  the  firm  to  be  incorporated  by 
Wall  Street  promoters,  with  the  resulting  dis- 
aster, and  the  beginning  of  business  life  anew 
in  the  old  quarters  on  East  Broadway.  An- 
other familiar  figure  of  the  hour  that  bears  kin- 
ship to  Mr.  Glass's  heroes  is  Edna  Ferber's 
Emma  McChesney.  Concerning  the  scenes  of 
Emma's  New  York  business  activities  Miss 
Ferber  writes:  "I  cannot  imagine  your  mak- 
ing a  pilgrimage  to  the  wholesale  skirt  district. 
Still  if  you  chance  to  be  down  that  way  looking 
for  Abe  and  Mawruss  you  might  drop  in  on 
Emma.  She's  in  that  neighbourhood."  And 
so  also  is  the  New  York  of  Fanny  Hurst's  Just 
Around  the  Corner — the  city  of  the  working 


OF  THE  NOVELISTS  279 

girl,  of  Childs's  restaurants  and  department 
stores. 

Two  recent  novels  touching  the  department 
store  are  F.  Hopkinson  Smith's  Felix  O'Day 
and  Mrs.  A.  M.  Williamson 's  The  Shop  Girl. 
In  the  former  book  was  Bosenthal's,  the  large 
store  on  Third  Avenue  where  Lady  Barbara 
found  employment  and  from  which  she  took  the 
lace  mantilla  that  was  afterwards  stolen  by 
Dalton.  The  heroine  of  The  Shop  Girl,  a  book 
which  Mrs.  Williamson  says  that  she  enjoyed 
more  than  any  other  book  she  ever  wrote,  was 
drawn  from  two  models.  One  was  a  girl  of  a 
very  good  family  who  sought  employment  in  a 
spirit  of  independence  and  found  it  at  Gim- 
bel's;  and  the  other  was  a  typical  New  York 
shop  girl.  The  atmosphere  for  the  life  of 
her  heroine  after  working  hours  Mrs.  William- 
son found  in  the  neighbourhood  of  Columbus 
Circle. 

Then  there  was  a  recent  novel,  which,  while 
practically  all  the  action  took  place  in  Paris, 
was,  in  the  person  of  its  heroine,  the  very  em- 
bodiment of  the  atmosphere  of  the  big  New 
York  department  stores.  That  was  Mr.  Sam- 


280  THE  NEW  YOEK 

uel  Merwin's  The  Honey  Bee.  If  you  would 
see  the  establishment  which  served  in  part  as 
the  model  for  the  one  in  Mr.  Merwin's  story 
you  can  find  it  on  the  west  side  of  Fifth  Ave- 
nue between  Thirty-eighth  and  Thirty-ninth 
Streets.  But  it  was  such  only  in  part.  In  its 
physical  aspect  that  was  the  place  that  the 
author  had  in  mind.  But  for  the  inner  work- 
ings, for  the  system  and  organisation,  Mr.  Mer- 
win  drew  upon  his  knowledge  of  a  large  depart- 
ment store  in  Boston.  It  happens  that  the 
general  manager  of  the  Boston  store  is  a  life 
long  friend  and  a  fraternity  brother  of  the 
author.  There  have  been  occasions  when  the 
manager  has  called  upon  Mr.  Merwin  for  sug- 
gestions when  a  line  of  reading  of  an  especial 
nature  was  thought  necessary  to  distract  the 
mind  of  some  hard-worked  employe.  The 
manager  is  one  of  the  characters  in  The  Honey 
Bee,  and,  with  the  establishment,  was  trans- 
ferred from  Boston  to  New  York  for  the  pur- 
pose of  the  story. 

But  again  across  every  counter  of  the  New 
York  department  store  is  the  shadow  of  0. 


OF  THE  NOVELISTS  281 

Henry.  "Shop  girls,"  he  says  of  Nancy  of 
"The  Trimmed  Lamp";  "no  such  persons  ex- 
ist. There  are  girls  who  work  in  shops.  They 
make  their  living  that  way.  But  why  turn 
their  occupation  into  an  adjective?  Let  us  be 
fair.  We  do  not  refer  to  the  girls  who  live  on 
Fifth  Avenue  as  ' marriage  girls.'  "  Go  down 
to  Sixth  Avenue  and  Eighteenth  Street  and  you 
will  find  Sieber-Mason's,  the  scene  of  "The 
Ferry  of  Unfulfilment,"  whence  a  thousand 
girls  flowed  along  the  sidewalk,  making  naviga- 
tion dangerous  to  men.  Discharged  from  * t  The 
Biggest  Store,"  Hetty  Pepper  made  her  way 
to  her  home  high  up  in  the  Vallambrosa  Apart- 
ments, there  to  find  romance  and  adventure  as 
related  in  "The  Third  Ingredient."  Madame 
Beaumont,  who  in  everyday  life  answered  to 
the  name  of  Mamie  Siviter  ("Transients  in 
Arcadia"),  having  lived  her  annual  glorious 
week  in  the  Hotel  Lotus,  went  back  to  her  place 
behind  the  hosiery  counter  at  Casey's  Mam- 
moth Store.  In  a  dozen  more  of  the  tales  the 
atmosphere  is  reflected.  A  saleslady  in  the 
gents'  gloves,  Masie  of  "A  Lickpenny  Lover," 


282  THE  NEW  YOEK 

was  one  of  the  three  thousand  girls  in  the 
"Biggest  Store. "  Perhaps  of  all  the  stories 
in  which  0.  Henry  touched  upon  this  phase  of 
metropolitan  life  "A  Lickpenny  Lover "  is  the 
one  best  remembered.  It  was  behind  the 
counter  that  Irving  Carter,  painter,  million- 
aire, traveller,  poet,  and  automobilist  found 
Masie,  and  finding  her,  strangely  lost  his 
heart.  By  persistent  wooing  he  at  length 
reached  the  flimsy,  fluttering,  little  soul  of  the 
shop  girl  that  existed  somewhere  deep  down  in 
her  lovely  bosom.  And  having  found  that  he 
poured  out  his  story,  and  painted  his  picture  of 
a  future  before  them — of  lands  far  beyond  the 
seas,  of  shores  where  summer  is  eternal,  of  far 
away  cities  with  lovely  palaces  and  towers  full 
of  beautiful  pictures  and  statues,  of  the  gon- 
dolas of  Venice,  the  elephants  and  temples  of 
India,  the  camel  trains  and  chariot  races  in 
Persia,  and  the  gardens  of  Japan.  But  Masie, 
listening  to  the  story,  grew  suddenly  cold  and 
left  him.  The  next  day  at  the  "Biggest 
Store"  her  chum  waylaid  her  and  asked  about 
her  "swell  friend."  "Him,"  was  the  retort. 


OF  THE  NOVELISTS  283 

"0,  he's  a  cheap  guy.  He  ain't  in  it  no  more. 
What  do  you  suppose  he  wanted  me  to  do?  He 
wanted  me  to  marry  him  and  go  to  Coney 
Island  for  a  wedding  tour. '  ' 


CHAPTEE  vrn 

The  Shifting  Scene— Hotels  of  the  Great  White  Way—- 
The Zig  Zag  Trail— The  Metropolitan  Opera  House— The 
Old  Grand  Central. 

THERE  lias  come  into  fashion  in  the  last  few 
years  a  kind  of  novel  of  New  York  life  which 
aims  to  reflect  and  interpret  the  restlessness  of 
that  life  by  a  constant  and  intentional  shifting 
of  the  scene.  For  example,  there  is  Rupert 
Hughes 's  What  Will  People  Say?  which  dealt 
with  the  very  rich  and  the  luxurious  side  of  the 
city  and  which  took  up  the  beginning  of  the 
dance  mania  in  April,  1913,  and  ended  early  in 
1914.  The  opening  paragraph  showed  Fifth 
Avenue  at  flood  tide.  To  the  eyes  of  Lieuten- 
ant Forbes,  just  home  from  the  Philippines,  it 
was  a  strange  sight.  He  had  not  seen  the  Ave- 
nue since  the  pathetic  old  horse  coaches  were 
changed  to  the  terrific  motor  stages.  Forbes 's 
first  glimpse,  according  to  the  key  supplied  by 
Mr.  Hughes,  was  at  the  crossing  either  at 
Thirty-fourth  Street,  or  at  Forty-second  Street. 

284 


285 


286  THE  NEW  YOEK 

Then,  by  way  of  illustration  of  this  kind  of 
novel,  take  the  first  hundred  pages  of  the  book. 
In  the  course  of  a  few  hundred  words  we  are 
at  the  Enslees'  home  at  Fiftieth  Street  and 
Fifth  Avenue,  and  a  little  later,  at  Fifty-first 
Street  there  is  a  description  of  the  "  affable 
grey  cathedral."  By  page  eight  we  have  seen 
Fifty-seventh  Street,  Broadway,  and  the  Biver- 
side  Drive.  Page  thirteen  brings  in  the  Knick- 
erbocker Hotel  at  which  Forbes  is  stopping. 
Longacre  Square  steps  into  view  on  page  fif- 
teen, with  the  Times  Building  standing  aloft, 
a  huddled  giraffe  of  a  building.  At  page 
eighteen  the  reader  has  been  taken  to  a  theatre 
which  is  identified  as  the  Eltinge  Theatre. 
The  peacock  rivalling  cafe  of  page  twenty-five 
is  Murray's,  which  is  soon  left  so  that  Eeisen- 
weber's  with  its  "  great  sign  in  vertical  electric 
letters,"  may  be  presented  on  page  thirty-five, 
the  Cafe  des  Beaux  Arts  and  Bustanoby's  on 
page  thirty-eight,  and  on  page  thirty-nine  the 
Cafe  de  Ninive,  in  reality  the  Cafe  de  POpera, 
later  Martin 's,  and  now  torn  down.  By  the  time 
page  sixty-three  is  reached  Forbes  has  begun  to 
investigate  Central  Park,  strolling  through  the 


OF  THE  NOVELISTS  287 

Zoo,  and  from  an  arch  which  Mr.  Hughes  iden- 
tifies as  the  bridge  near  the  Seventh  Avenue 
entrance,  pausing  to  watch  a  cavalcade  of 
pupils  from  a  riding  school.  On  page  sixty- 
seven  we  have  the  Army  and  Navy  Club,  and 
the  Knickerbocker  Cafe,  and  on  page  sixty- 
eight  the  Fifth  Avenue  Bank  at  Forty-fourth 
Street  and  Fifth  Avenue,  and  Sherry's.  On 
page  seventy-one  back  to  the  barroom  of  the 
Knickerbocker  for  gin  rickeys  and  a  study  of 
Maxfield  Parrish's  fresco  of  "King  Cole." 
Bustanoby's  again  at  page  seventy-four  and 
at  page  ninety-six  the  beginning  of  an  elabo- 
rate description  of  the  Metropolitan  Opera 
House.  In  the  same  way  one  might  go  through 
Louis  Joseph  Vance's  Joan  Thursday,  or  Eex 
Beach's  The  Auction  Block,  George  Bronson- 
Ho ward's  God's  Man,  or  Owen  Johnson's  The 
Sixty-First  Second,  or  The  Salamander,  or 
Making  Money.  In  God's  Man  the  Curate's, 
Canary's,  Griff ony's,  and  Sydenham's  of  fic- 
tion, are  the  Eector's,  Sherry's,  Tiffany's,  and 
the  Cafe  de  Paris  of  fact.  These  names  also 
figured  in  the  same  author's  Pages  from  the 
Book  of  Broadway.  Every  one  of  the  tales 


288  THE  NEW  YORK 

that  made  up  that  book  had  for  the  protagonist 
some  conspicuous  character  along  the  Great 
White  Way.  For  example,  in  "The  Purple 
Phantasm/'  the  lead  was  the  late  Paul  Arm- 
strong, under  the  name  of  Potter  Playf air. 

Zigzag  goes  the  trail,  of  an  afternoon  along 
the  stretch  of  Fifth  Avenue,  or  through  the 
winding  paths  of  the  Park;  by  night  into  the 
lane  where  the  lights  are  brightest,  and  the  hum 
of  life  swells  into  a  tumult.  "Is  New  York  a 
large  city?"  asks  a  demure  Haitian  maiden  of 
her  American  lover  in  a  recent  story  by  Mr. 
Richard  Harding  Davis.  "No.  It  is  a  large 
electric  light  sign"  is  the  sapient  reply.  So, 
dazzled  by  the  light  the  Pilgrim  takes  the  liberty 
of  passing  from  scene  to  scene,  from  allusion  to 
allusion,  without  any  pretence  of  sequence  or 
order.  You  are  at  Broadway  and  Thirtieth 
Street  before  Wallack's  Theatre,  or  what  once 
was  Wallack's  Theatre.  There  you  have  the 
definite  background  that  Booth  Tarkington  put 
into  Harlequin  and  Pantomime,  and  the  scene  of 
Jesse  Lynch  Williams 's  "The  Comedy  of  a 
Playwright. ' '  You  are  four  blocks  to  the  north, 
at  the  point  where  Sixth  Avenue,  Broadway,  and 


OF  THE  NOVELISTS  289 

Thirty-fourth  Street  cross  one  another.  If  they 
did  not  so  cross,  and  if  a  man  wearing  a  red 
necktie,  and  answering  to  the  name  of  Kelly, 
had  not  there  engineered  a  traffic  block  that,  to 
use  his  own  words,  "  would  have  made  William 
A.  Brady  die  of  envy, "  how  could  Sidney  Porter 
have  written  what  is  perhaps  the  0.  Henriest  of 
all  his  stories,  " Mammon  and  the  Archer''? 
At  Broadway  and  Twenty-sixth  Street  was  once 
Delmonico's.  Then  the  restaurant  became 
Martin's.  In  the  latter  incarnation  it  played  a 
part  in  Arthur  Train's  The  Man  Hunt.  There 
Ealston,  the  newly  appointed  Assistant  Secre- 
tary of  the  Navy,  in  his  search  for  Steadman 
at  the  behest  of  Ellen  Ferguson,  finds  his  way 
through  the  revolving  doors,  makes  the  ac- 
quaintance of  Florence  Davenport,  and  knocks 
out  the  bully  Sullivan.  Incidentally  Ealston 's 
search  came  to  an  end  in  Farrer's  gambling 
house,  which  was  placed  on  Forty-fifth  Street, 
near  Broadway.  Back  to  the  theatre  district, 
and  you  are  in  the  haunts  of  the  hero  of  George 
Barr  McCutcheon's  Little  What's  His  Name. 
At  the  Metropolitan  Opera  House,  and  you  have 
the  choice  of  Marion  Crawford's  The  Prima 


290  THE  NEW  YOEK 

Donna,  W.  J.  Henderson's  The  Soul  of  a  Tenor, 
Brander  Matthews 's  The  Action  and  the  Word, 
Thomas  Dixon's  The  Root  of  Evil,  and  half  a 
score  more.  The  spirit  of  the  Fifth  Avenue 
shops  plays  a  strong  part  in  David  Graham 
Phillips 's  The  Husband's  Story.  Henrietta 
Hastings  and  Sophy  Baker,  living  in  the  nearby 
Holland  House,  enjoyed  an  orgy  of  shopping. 
The  dressmaking  establishment  in  the  same 
author's  Old  Wives  for  New  was  drawn  from 
Mrs.  Osborne's  place  on  Fifth  Avenue  about 
Thirty-sixth  Street.  The  Waldorf-Astoria  was 
described  by  Brander  Matthews  in  "Under  an 
April  Sky,"  of  Vistas  of  New  York.  On  the 
south  side  of  Fortieth  Street,  almost  in  the  mid- 
dle of  the  block  between  Sixth  and  Seventh  Ave- 
nues, you  will  find  the  fortune-telling  den  of 
Countess  Casanova  of  Harry  Leon  Wilson's 
Bunker  Bean.  On  Forty-second  Street  you  will 
get  glimpses  of  Harvey  J.  O'Higgins's  Detective 
Barney — The  Dummy  of  the  stage  version. 
For  the  Hotel  Harlem  read  the  Hotel  Manhat- 
tan, and  for  the  Beaumont,  the  Belmont.  At 
the  southwest  corner  of  Lexington  Avenue  and 
Twenty-eighth  Street  is  the  little  restaurant 


OF  THE  NOVELISTS  291 

where  Dodo  (Owen  Johnson's  The  Salamander) 
used  to  go  to  dine  in  her  hours  of  poverty.  It 
served  purposes  not  only  of  economy  but  of  con- 
venience because  the  boarding-house  in  which 
Dodo  and  her  sister  salamanders  lived  was  at 
the  northwest  corner  of  Madison  Avenue  and 
Twenty-ninth  Street,  nearly  opposite  the  Seville 
Hotel.  But  when  the  admirer  of  early  days  ap- 
peared upon  the  scene,  in  order  to  avoid  compli- 
cations, she  hurried  him  away  to  dine  at  the 
Prince  George  Hotel.  Julie  M.  Lippmann's 
Mariha-loy-ihe-Day  opened  at  the  corner  of 
Broadway  and  Thirty-third  Street.  The  Cen- 
tury Association  at  number  7  West  Forty-third 
Street,  has  been  called  by  many  names  in  the 
course  of  the  fiction  dealing  with  New  York  life, 
but  never  save  in  love  and  reverence.  All  hail 
to  the  spirit  of  the  Centurions!  As  the  Cen- 
tury, pure  and  simple,  it  appeared  in  F.  Hop- 
kinson  Smith's  Peter.  It  was  Peter's  favourite 
club.  But  those  were  the  days  when  the  club 
was  still  in  its  Fifteenth  Street  home,  not  more 
than  a  stone's  throw  from  Peter's  own  quarters. 
Some  of  the  men  of  the  Century  you  will  find  at 
the  University  Club  at  Fifth  Avenue  and  Fifty- 


292  THE  NEW  YOEK 

fourth  Street,  and  at  the  University  you  can  get 
in  touch  with  the  characters  of  Arthur  Train's 
McAllister  and  His  Double, — Peter  the  doorman 
is  Peter  the  Doorman  still — and  through  the 
windows  pick  out  on  the  Fifth  Avenue  pavement 
the  girl  who  best  fits  your  idea  of  the  heroine  of 
Jesse  Lynch  Williams 's  My  Lost  Duchess. 

At  the  Grand  Central  Station  a  stop  of  some 
duration  is  imperative,  for  across  the  hall  of  the 
old  building,  which  was  torn  down  four  or  five 
years  ago,  flit  the  ghosts  of  a  score  of  the  men 
and  women  of  the  city's  fiction.  In  The  Exiles, 
a  tale  of  Tangier,  Eichard  Harding  Davis  drew 
a  picture  of  Fourteenth  Street  of  a  summer's 
evening  that  is  not  easily  forgotten.  In  Sol- 
diers of  Fortune,  his  hero  and  heroine,  lean- 
ing over  the  rail  of  a  steamer  somewhere  in  the 
South  Atlantic  Ocean,  pretended  that  the  glow 
upon  the  horizon  was  the  reflection  of  the  lights 
along  the  Eumson  Eoad.  But  nowhere  has  Mr. 
Davis  produced  the  thrill  of  the  city  more  ef- 
fectively than  where,  in  Captain  MacJclin,  he 
showed  Eoyal,  returned  from  the  tempestuous 
adventure  that  had  made  him  for  a  brief  period 
Vice-President  of  Honduras,  peering  into  the 


OF  THE  NOVELISTS  293 

ticket  office  window  in  the  old  Grand  Central 
Station  and  asking  for  a  ticket  to  Dobbs  Ferry. 
In  that  request,  so  commonplace  to  the  ears  of 
the  alpaca-coated  man  behind  the  barred  win- 
dow, was  summed  up  all  the  joy  of  home  coming, 
all  the  reaction  from  the  hunted  days  in  tropical 
jungle  and  fever-laden  swamps. 


CHAPTER  IX 

"The  House  of  Mirth"  and  Others— Bryant  Park—Stan- 
field's — Stewart  Edward  White  and  127  Madison  Avenue. 

ALSO  in  that  waiting  room  of  the  old  Grand 
Central  the  reader  has  his  first  glimpse  of  Miss 
Lily  Bart  (The  House  of  Mirth).  It  was  there 
that  Mrs.  Wharton's  heroine,  who  had  missed 
her  train  to  Ehinebeck,  met  Selden,  and  visited 
his  bachelor  apartment  for  tea,  a  perfectly  in- 
nocent venture  that  had  consequences  and  mis- 
interpretations. The  Benedick  was  where  Sel- 
den lived,  but  the  Benedick  is  not  easy  of  posi- 
tive identification.  From  the  station  they 
turned  into  Madison  Avenue  and  strolled  north- 
ward. The  walk  was  not  a  long  one.  Selden 's 
street  was  probably  about  Forty-ninth  or  Fif- 
tieth. Miss  Bart  noted  the  new  brick  and  lime- 
stone house  fronts,  fantastically  varied  in 
obedience  to  the  American  craving  for  novelty, 
but  fresh  and  inviting  with  their  awnings  and 
flower-boxes.  The  Benedick  had  a  marble 
porch  and  pseudo-Georgian  fagade,  and  from 

294 


NEW  YOEK  OF  THE  NOVELISTS     295 

Selden's  apartment,  which  was  on  the  top  floor, 
a  little  balcony  protruded.  That  is  the  environ- 
ment in  which  we  first  meet  Lily  Bart.  The 
time  comes  when  we  see  her  in  another.  Dis- 
illusionment and  disappointment  have  come 
upon  her.  She  is  at  Fifth  Avenue  and  Forty- 
first  Street,  and  she  feels  that  she  can  walk  no 
farther,  and  she  remembers  that  in  Bryant  Park 
there  are  seats  where  she  may  rest.  "The  mel- 
ancholy pleasure  ground  was  almost  deserted 
when  she  entered  it,  and  she  sank  down  on  an 
empty  bench  in  the  glare  of  an  electric  street 
lamp.  .  .  .  Night  had  now  closed  in  and  the 
roar  of  traffic  in  Forty-second  Street  was  dying 
out.  As  complete  darkness  fell  on  the  Square 
the  lingering  occupants  of  the  benches  rose  and 
dispersed;  but  now  and  then  a  stray  figure, 
hurrying  homeward,  struck  across  the  path 
where  Lily  sat,  looming  black  for  a  moment  in 
the  white  circle  of  electric  light."  The  play  is 
nearly  done.  The  moment  is  at  hand  for  the 
ringing  down  of  the  curtain  on  the  tragedy  of 
Lily  Bart. 

The  sensational  life  of  the  New  York  under- 
world was  the  theme  of  Arthur  Stringer's  The 


296  THE  NEW  YORK 

Wire  Tappers,  and  its  sequel  Phantom  Wires. 
A  house  which  figures  in  both  those  stories  was 
Stanfield's  gambling  house,  in  reality  Canfield's, 
next  door  to  Delmonico  's.  Much  of  the  same 
author's  The  Hand  of  Peril,  which  was  pub- 
lished last  spring,  was  laid  in  New  York. 
There  is  mention  of  the  Union  Club ;  a  fight  in  a 
taxi-cab  takes  place  beside  the  drinking  fountain 
in  Central  Park  between  the  Sheep-Pasture  and 
The  Mall;  the  original  of  the  little  millinery 
shop  of  the  tale  may  be  found  on  the  south  side 
of  Forty-seventh  Street,  between  Fifth  and 
Sixth  Avenues;  and  the  " Squab  dump"  known 
as  the  "Alambo,"  just  off  Longacre  Square 
was  plainly  a  well-known  hotel-home  of  chorus 
girls  just  round  the  corner  from  The  Palace. 
An  even  later  book  by  Mr.  Stringer,  The  Prairie 
Wife,  is  laid  in  part  in  New  York,  and  a  rather 
important  scene  takes  place  in  the  Delia  Eobbia 
room  of  the  Vanderbilt  Hotel. 

In  Stewart  Edward  White's  The  Claim  Jump- 
ers four  youths  were  shown  holding  a  discus- 
sion in  a  fifth-story  sitting-room  of  a  New  York 
boarding-house.  The  sitting-room  was  large 
and  square,  and  in  the  wildest  disorder.  Easels 


OF  THE  NOVELISTS  297 

and  artist's  materials  thrust  back  to  the  wall 
sufficiently  advertised  the  art  student,  and  per- 
haps explained  the  untidiness.  The  original  of 
that  house,  which  also  played  a  part  in  Mr. 
White's  Gold,  was  at  number  127  Madison  Ave- 
nue, between  Thirtieth  and  Thirty-first  Streets. 
The  old  structure  has  been  torn  down  and  an 
unromantic  office  building  occupies  the  site. 
The  house  in  which  Mr.  White's  heroes  dwelt 
was  situated  between  a  church  and  an  apartment 
house,  and  was  therefore  known  as  Purgatory. 
It  was  kept  by  a  Swiss  named  Karl.  "A  num- 
ber of  us,"  writes  the  author,  "had  the  whole 
top  floor.  Ira  Eemsen,  my  brother  Gilbert,  Sec- 
tor Fox,  Stanley  McGraw,  and  some  other  more 
transient  members.  Naturally  I  turned  to  the 
old  quarters  at  number  129  as  a  background  for 
these  New  York  scenes  in  Gold  and  The  Claim 
Jumpers." 


CHAPTER  X 

New  Bohemias — Westover  Court — Teagan's  Arcade — The 
House  of  a  Million  Intrigues. 

Two  or  three  years  ago  an  architect  of  talent 
and  imagination  looked  upon  certain  ugly  and 
sordid  brick  buildings  hard  by  Longacre  Square 
and  saw  possibilities.  "Give  me  a  free  hand," 
he  said  to  the  representatives  of  the  great  estate 
that  owned  the  property,  "and  at  a  cost  that 
will  not  be  excessive  I  will  convert  all  this  into  a 
bachelor  apartment  that  will  reproduce  a  bit  of 
the  London  that  we  like  best  to  think  about,  the 
London  of  the  Inner  Temple  or  of  the  Albany." 
He  achieved  all  that  he  had  promised.  But,  un- 
wisely, he  did  not  stop  there.  Looking  upon  his 
work  he  found  it  good,  and  was  moved  to  write 
about  it.  With  a  fine  rhetorical  flourish  he 
painted  his  "Westover  Court"  as  another  Al- 
bany, a  quiet  and  almost  remote  living  place  for 
men  who  desire  to  be  in  the  heart  of  the  busy  life 
and  the  amusement  centres  of  the  metropolis. 
Then,  of  the  Albany  that  runs  from  Vigo  Street 

298 


NEW  YORK  OF  THE  NOVELISTS     299 

to  Piccadilly  he  went  on  rashly  to  say: 
"  Among  those  who  lived  there  were  Lord 
Byron,  Lord  Macaulay,  Thackeray,  and  Glad- 
stone. Conan  Doyle  naturally  had  no  more  fit- 
ting residence  for  Sherlock  Holmes. "  Of 
course  it  was  E.  W.  Hornung's  Baffles,  and  not 
Sherlock  Holmes,  with  whom  the  Albany  is  asso- 
ciated, and  countless  drab  London  squares  lie 
between  Piccadilly  and  Holmes 's  rooms  in  Up- 
per Baker  Street.  But  for  all  that  the  atmos- 
phere that  the  architect  sought  is  in  Westover 
Court,  and  upon  that  atmosphere  Owen  John- 
son drew  for  one  of  his  most  vivid  pictures  of 
the  city  in  Making  Money. 

Bo  jo  and  March  had  left  the  Great  White 
Way  behind  them  and  turned  down  a  squalid 
side  street  with  tenements  in  the  dark  distances. 
Before  two  green  pillars  they  stopped,  and 
through  a  long,  irregular  monastic  hall  flooded 
with  mellow  lights  and  sudden  arches,  found 
their  way  into  an  oasis  of  quiet  and  green 
things.  "Ali  Baba  Court"  is  what  Marsh 
called  it  in  his  enthusiasm. 

In  the  heart  of  the  noisiest,  vilest,  most  brutal  strug- 
gle of  the  city  lay  this  little  bit  of  the  Old  World, 


300  THE  NEW  YORK 

decked  in  green  plots,  with  vine-covered  fountain  and 
a  stone  Cupid  perched  on  tiptoe,  and  above  a  group 
of  dream  trees  filling  the  lucent  yellow  and  green  en- 
closure with  a  miraculous  foliage.  Lights  blazed  in  a 
score  of  windows  above  them,  while  at  four  mediaeval 
entrances,  of  curved  doorways  under  sloping  green 
aprons,  the  suffused  glow  of  iron  lanterns  seemed  like 
distant  signals  lost  in  a  fog.  Above  the  low  roofs  high 
against  the  blue-black  sky  the  giant  city  came  peeping 
down  upon  them  from  the  regimented  globes  of  fire 
on  the  Astor  roof.  A  milky  flag  drifted  lazily  across 
an  aigrette  of  steam.  To  the  right,  the  top  of  the 
Times  Tower,  divorced  from  all  the  ugliness  at  its  feet, 
rose  like  an  historic  campanile  played  about  by  timid 
stars.  Over  the  roof-tops  the  hum  of  the  city,  never 
stilled,  turned  like  a  great  wheel,  incessantly,  with 
faint,  detached  sounds  pleasantly  audible;  a  bell;  a 
truck  moving  like  a  shrieking  shell;  the  impertinent 
honk  of  taxis ;  urchins  on  wheels ;  the  shattering  rush 
of  distant  iron  bodies  tearing  through  the  air ;  an  extra 
cried  on  a  shriller  note;  the  ever-recurring  pipe  of  a 
police  whistle  compelling  order  in  the  confusion;  fog 
horns  from  the  river,  and  underneath  something  more 
elusive  and  confused,  the  churning  of  great  human 
masses  passing  and  repassing. 

It  is  to  a  building,  or  a  jumble  of  buildings, 
far  different,  but  not  less  curious,  that  Mr.  John- 
son turns  in  the  introductory  chapter  of  a  later 
novel,  The  Woman  Gives.  At  that  intersection 


OF  THE  NOVELISTS  301 

of  Broadway  and  Columbus  Avenue  where  the 
grumbling  subway  and  the  roaring  Elevated 
meet  at  Lincoln  Square  stands  what  Mr.  John- 


ONE  OF  THE  EXITS  THAT  LEAD  OVER  THE 
ROOF  TOPS  IN  "THE  CASTLE  OF  A 
MILLION  INTRIGUES" 

son  calls  * '  Teagan  's  Arcade, ' '  but  what  the  Pil- 
grim prefers  to  think  of  as  "The  Castle  of  a 
Million  Intrigues."  It  covers  a  block,  bisected 
by  an  arcade,  and  rising  six  capacious  stories  in 


302     NEW  YORK  OF  THE  NOVELISTS 

the  form  of  an  enormous  H.  Without,  the 
Square,  a  charming  place  of  contending  human 
tides,  where  "the  Italians  had  installed  their 
fruit  shops  and  their  groceries ;  the  French  their 
florists  and  delicatessen  shops;  the  Jews  their 
clothing  bazaars;  the  Germans  their  jewellers 
and  their  shoe  stores;  the  Irish  their  saloons 
and  restaurants."  Within  mystery — mystery 
in  the  dimness  of  the  passageways,  in  the 
countless  exits  which  lead  through  tunnels  or 
over  roof  top  bridges  to  adjoining  structures,  in 
the  glazed  doors  on  which  are  read  strange 
names  and  stranger  occupations.  "It  was  a 
place,"  writes  the  author,  "where  no  questions 
were  asked  and  no  advice  permitted;  where,  if 
you  found  a  man  wandering  in  the  long 
draughty  corridors,  you  piloted  him  to  his  room 
and  put  him  to  bed  and  did  not  seek  to  reform 
him  in  the  morning.  This  was  its  etiquette." 
The  backyard  of  a  new  Bohemia,  "Teagan's 
Arcade. "  "  The  Castle  of  a  Million  Intrigues. ' ' 


PART  VI 

THE  CITY  REMOTE  AND  THE  CITY  BEYOND 


CHAPTER  I 

Some  Suburbs  of  Fiction — Southward  Bound — The  Lon- 
don of  Esmond — The  Environs  of  Paris. 

THERE  is  the  season  of  the  year  when  the  com- 
posite heroine  of  the  latest  novel  of  New  York 
life  bearing  the  imprint  of  the  Eobert  W.  Cham- 
bers-Richard Harding  Davis-Rex  Beach-Gou- 
verneur  Morris-Owen  Johnson-Rupert  Hughes 
Company  is  busy  superintending  the  packing  of 
many  trunks.  "What  is  going  inside  those 
trunks  is  a  matter  between  the  heroine  and  her 
maid,  and  is  a  subject  which  no  man  will  have 
the  temerity  to  attempt  to  discuss.  The  com- 
posite hero  is  sending  his  man  out  to  Ardsley, 
or  Apawamis,  for  the  clubs  that  have  been  left 
in  the  locker  room  or  in  the  care  of  Fergus 
McDivot,  or  whatever  may  be  the  name  of  the 
resident  professional.  In  the  course  of  the 
next  few  days  there  will  be  much  telephoning, 
telegraphing,  and  cabling — for  reservations  by 
the  Seaboard  Air  Line  or  the  Atlantic  Coast 
Line  to  Palm  Beach,  for  deck  staterooms  on  the 

305 


306  THE  NEW  YORK 

Saratoga  or  some  one  of  the  boats  of  the  United 
Fruit,  for  accommodations  at  the  Sevilla  or 
Inglaterra  of  Havana,  the  Colonial  of  Nassau, 
or  the  Princess  or  Hamilton  of  Bermuda. 
Then  the  hour  will  come  when  the  chill  damp- 
ness of  the  New  York  February  will  be  left 
behind,  and  the  flirtation  and  intrigue  of  the 
world  of  make-believe  will  be  transported  from 
palm  garden  to  palm  grove,  from  Fifth  Avenue 
and  Broadway  to  the  Prado  and  Malecon,  or  to 
the  man  made  jungle  that  lies  between  Lake 
Worth  and  the  ocean,  or  to  the  shores  of  the 
Bay  of  Biscayne,  or  to  the  winding,  limestone 
roads  of  the  Bermudas.  Of  course  we  must  not 
lose  sight  entirely  of  another  type  of  New 
York  hero,  personified,  for  example,  in 
"Soapy"  of  0.  Henry's  "The  Cop  and  the  An- 
them/' Very  likely  several  weeks  have  al- 
ready passed  since  "Soapy"  was  moodily  con- 
templating the  brightly  lighted  plate  glass  win- 
dows and  the  inviting  restaurants  of  the  City 
of  Too  Many  Caliphs,  meditating  upon  just 
what  violation  of  the  law  would  insure  his  de- 
portation to  the  hospitable  purlieus  of  Black- 
well's  Island,  which  was  his  Palm  Beach  and 


OF  THE  NOVELISTS  307 

Eiviera  for  the  winter  months.  Or  of  another 
heroine,  Maggie,  who  works  behind  the  hosiery 
counter  in  "The  Biggest  Store,"  and  whose 
southern  horizon  ends  at  the  lake  which  sepa- 
rates Asbury  Park  from  Ocean  Grove. 

But  the  days  will  pass  swiftly.  The  sun  that 
looks  down  impartially  upon  the  bay,  the  Bat- 
tery, the  Bowery,  and  Broadway,  will  wax 
warmer.  April  will  see  the  line  of  bric-a-brac- 
laden,  Victrola-record-laden,  parasol-laden,  golf- 
club-laden  motor  cars  belonging  to  the  Cham- 
bers-Davis-Beach-Morris-Johnson-Hughes Com- 
pany hero  and  heroine  rolling  along  the  Bos- 
ton Post  Road,  or  over  the  Queensborough 
Bridge,  or  up  the  Weehawken  grade.  This  will 
be  the  advance  guard  of  the  migration  to  the 
city  beyond.  The  great  estates  of  fiction, 
whether  they  happen  to  be  in  the  Bernardsville 
region  of  New  Jersey,  or  at  Tuxedo,  or  Green- 
wich, or  on  Long  Island,  or  capping  tall  hills 
that  look  down  upon  the  Hudson  Eiver,  will  be 
rolling  wide  their  gates.  The  stay  at  home 
reader  will  no  longer  be  obliged  to  send  his  im- 
agination a  thousand  miles  southward  in  pur- 
suit of  the  ladies  and  gentlemen  of  his  particu- 


308  THE  NEW  YORK 

lar  favourite  novel  of  the  fleeting  moment. 
Once  more  the  tea  parties  and  week  end  parties 
of  romance  will  be  near  at  hand. 

The  outdoor  life  in  its  fullest  development 
may  be  regarded  as  something  belonging  es- 
sentially to  our  own  generation ;  but  the  suburb 
is  as  old  as  fiction  itself.  To  confine  attention 
to  those  books  and  authors  which  have  been 
most  frequently  introduced  for  purposes  of  al- 
lusion in  the  course  of  this  ramble.  Before  Ol- 
iver Twist  was  introduced  to  the  foul  alleys 
about  Great  Saffron  Hill  and  to  Fagin's  den 
he  had  passed  through  Barnet,  that  suburb  to 
the  north  of  London,  and  there  made  the  ac- 
quaintance of  the  Artful  Dodger.  The  mem- 
bers of  the  Pickwick  Club  were  much  less  at 
home  in  Fleet  Street  or  Cornhill  than  they  were 
in  certain  delightful  inns  and  fields  of  the  en- 
virons. Barnaby  Eudge  is  less  a  tale  of  the 
city  itself  than  it  is  of  the  May-pole  Tavern. 
What  Thackerayan  can  forget  the  little  dinners 
that  the  Marquis  of  Steyne  was  in  the  habit  of 
giving  at  Greenwich,  or  the  evening  there  when 
George  Warrington  scored  Sir  Barnes  New- 
come,  and  the  latter  changed  his  opinion  of  the 


OF  THE  NOVELISTS  309 

Vicomte  de  Florae  when  he  learned  that  the 
Frenchman  might  call  himself  the  Prince  of 
Montcontour  if  he  so  wished?  The  London  of 
Henry  Esmond  is  the  heart  of  the  city  to-day. 
But  in  the  last  years  of  Queen  Anne  it  was  as 
much  a  suburb  as  Roslyn  is  in  its  relation  to 
Manhattan.  The  duelling  ground  where  Frank 
Esmond  fell  by  the  sword  of  the  ill-omened  Mo- 
hun  entailed  a  journey  from  the  city  proper  to 
the  city  beyond.  The  first  line  of  the  long  se- 
ries of  novels  dealing  with  the  musketeers  of 
Dumas  introduced  a  suburb,  and  throughout 
the  length  of  The  Three  Musketeers,  Twenty 
Years  After,  and  The  Vicomte  de  Bragelonne, 
the  old  Paris  of  tortuous  streets  is  subordinate 
to  its  environs.  In  every  direction,  through 
every  city  gate,  Athos,  Porthos,  Aramis,  and 
D'Artagnan  urged  their  horses.  It  was  to  a 
monastery  at  Noisy  that  D'Artagnan,  hunting 
for  Aramis,  trailed  Bazin;  it  was  to  St.  Ger- 
main that  he  conveyed  the  boy  king  and  the 
Queen  mother  in  the  stormy  days  of  the  Fronde. 
It  was  in  the  anteroom  of  the  palace  at  Ver- 
sailles that  he  waited  on  the  whim  of  the  king 
grown  to  manhood ;  it  was  at  Eueil  that,  in  com- 


310     NEW  YOEK  OF  THE  NOVELISTS 

pany  with  Porthos,  he  stumbled  upon  the  treas- 
ure catacombs  of  Mazarin.  And  no  less  active 
than  those  iron  horsemen  in  the  penetration  of 
the  outlying  districts  of  Lutetia  was  the  hero 
of  the  earlier  Valois  series,  the  incomparable 
Chicot.  No  matter  what  his  individual  period 
or  what  the  time  of  which  he  writes,  the  Pari- 
sian novelist  has  always  heard  the  call  of  the 
green  fields  that  lie  beyond  the  fortifications. 
For  him  the  springtime  Seine  winds  invitingly 
by  St.  Cloud,  Malmaison,  and  Boujival.  Take 
Maupassant.  The  river  was  in  his  blood,  and 
that  passion  was  reflected  in  countless  tales  of 
its  moods,  its  currents,  its  gaieties,  and  its  en- 
nuis. There  is  a  whole  book  given  over  to 
these  adventures  beyond  the  wall,  Les  Diman- 
cJies  d'un  Bourgeois  de  Paris.  Daudet's  Sap- 
pho is  regarded  as  a  tale  of  Paris  streets  and 
studios,  but  the  greater  scenes  are  played  out 
at  Chaville  in  the  little  house  near  the  railway 
station  where  Jean  Gaussin  and  Fanny  Le 
Grand  lived  in  close  proximity  to  the  Hettemas, 
and  in  the  forest  of  Bas-Meudon. 


CHAPTER  II 

The  Water  Side— Jabez  Bulltongue  of  Locust  Valley— 
On  a  North  River  Pier— De Witt  Clinton  Park. 

WHILE  one  of  the  motor  cars  to  which  allusion 
has  been  made  in  a  previous  chapter  is  waiting 
before  the  ferry  house  at  West  Forty-second 
Street  and  the  North  Eiver,  preparatory  to  its 
climb  of  the  Weehawken  slope  and  its  journey 
to  Normandy  Hill  in  Morristown,  from  the  in- 
coming boat  lurches  a  character  from  the  pages 
of  0.  Henry.  His  attire — but  for  the  detail  let 
that  be  left  to  the  pen  of  Porter.  Suffice  to  say 
that  it  is  bucolic  in  the  extreme,  and  that  in  the 
carpet  bag  in  his  hand  there  is  a  large  sum  of 
money.  He  invites  every  danger,  he  courts 
every  pitfall.  But  the  wolves  of  the  city  will 
have  none  of  him,  or  his  wealth.  His  dress 
proclaims  his  rustic  simplicity  a  little  too 
loudly.  The  roll  of  bills  that  he  flaunts  before 
the  eyes  of  strangers  must  be  counterfeit. 
Perhaps  he  is  an  agent  of  Mulberry  Street  in 
disguise.  At  that  the  make-up  is  much  too 

311 


312  THE  NEW  YOEK 

thick  to  be  artistic.  In  the  course  of  a  day's 
wandering  he  sees  a  great  light.  The  home- 
spun is  discarded  and  there  appears  a  new- 
comer, dressed,  to  the  superficial  eye  at  least, 
like  any  one  of  several  hundred  thousand  New 
Yorkers.  But  with  that  transformation  van- 
ishes the  security  that  had  been  born  of  sus- 
picion. 

So  no  more  of  the  misadventures  of  Jabez 
Bulltongue  of  Locust  Valley,  Ulster  County, 
who  invaded  Little  Old  Noisyville-on-the-Hud- 
son  with  his  corduroys,  his  wisp  of  hay,  and  the 
nine  hundred  and  fifty  dollars  that  had  been  his 
share  of  grandmother's  farm.  Doubtless  in- 
vestigation would  discover  the  originals  of 
" Bunco  Harry"  and  of  the  particular  side 
street  groggery  where  Jabez  left  his  valise  for 
safe-keeping.  In  a  former  chapter  of  the  book 
there  was  allusion  to  the  saloon  of  "The  Lost 
Blend,"  an  establishment  identified  from  with- 
out as  one  at  the  corner  of  Irving  Place  and 
Eighteenth  Street.  For  final  corroboration  the 
Pilgrim  recently  ventured  within.  There,  on 
the  sober  side  of  the  bar,  was,  to  the  life,  the 
white  jacketed  attendant  of  the  tale.  And,  like 
the  hero  of  "The  Lost  Blend,"  he  answered  to 


OF  THE  NOVELISTS  313 

the  name  of  "Con."  "Do  I  remember  Mr. 
Porter!  Surest  thing  you  know.  He  told  me 
he  had  put  me  into  some  of  his  stories.  But  I 
ain't  never  read  none  of  them  yet."  Later  the 
0.  Henry  trail  will  lead  to  Coney  Island ;  but  so 
far  as  Manhattan  is  concerned  it  ends  along  the 
water  front.  In  Cabbages  and  Kings  that  trail 
first  appeared.  There  was  a  picture  of  two 
men  sitting  on  a  stringer  of  a  North  Kiver  pier 
while  a  steamer  from  the  tropics  was  unloading 
bananas  and  oranges.  One  of  the  men  was 
0  'Day,  who  had  formerly  been  with  the  Colum- 
bia Detective  Agency.  In  a  moment  of  depres- 
sion and  confidence  he  told  his  companion  of 
the  mistake  that  had  brought  him  to  his  unen- 
viable condition,  and  incidentally  cleared  up 
for  the  reader  the  mystery  that  throughout  the 
book  had  obscured  the  marriage  of  Frank 
Goodwin  and  the  lady  known  in  Coralio  as  Isa- 
bel Guilbert. 

At  the  old  Iron  Steamboat  landing  at  Twenty- 
second  Street  and  the  North  Eiver,  a  landing 
which  ceased  to  exist  only  a  few  years  ago, 
Tobin  ("Tobin's  Palm")  left  the  Coney  Island 
boat  on  which,  in  the  course  of  an  hour's  travel, 
he  had  encountered  so  many  astonishing  ad- 


314     NEW  YORK  OF  THE  NOVELISTS 

ventures.  At  Twenty- second  Street  and  Ninth 
Avenue,  where  he  stopped  to  gaze  at  the  moon 
over  the  Elevated  Eailroad,  he  fell  in  with  the 
crooked-nosed  man,  a  meeting  that  had  been 
mysteriously  foreseen  by  Madame  Zozo,  the 
wonderful  palmist  of  the  Nile,  in  her  enchanted 
chicken  coop  at  Dreamland  or  Luna  Park. 
Over  one  of  the  several  West  Twenty-third 
Street  ferries,  bound  for  the  Eocky  Mountains 
("The  Memoirs  of  a  Yellow  Dog"),  travel  the 
long  down  trodden  but  now  insurgent  husband 
and  the  runaway  canine,  the  latter  joyfully  an- 
swering to  the  name  of  "Pete,"  instead  of  the 
cloying  "Lovey."  In  "Vanity  and  Some  Sa- 
bles" there  was  specific  mention  of  DeWitt 
Clinton  Park,  which  will  be  found  at  Fifty-sec- 
ond Street  and  the  North  Eiver.  The  park  was 
a  haunt  of  Kid  Brady  and  the  stove  pipe  gang. 
"The  Stove  Pipe  sub-district,"  0.  Henry  in- 
forms us,  "is  a  narrow  and  natural  extension 
of  the  familiar  district  known  as  Hell's  Kitchen. 
The  Stove  Pipe  strip  of  town  runs  along 
Eleventh  and  Twelfth  Avenues  on  the  river, 
and  bends  a  hard  and  sooty  elbow  around  little, 
homeless  DeWitt  Clinton  Park." 


CHAPTEE  III 

Roads  to  the  North — Yorkville — A  House  in  Fifty-fourth 
Street — St.  John's  Cathedral  and  Morningside  Park — No 
Man's  Land — The  Polo  Grounds  and  Manhattan  Field — 
Dobbs  Ferry. 

IN  diverse  ways  in  the  trail  lead  the  roads  to 
the  north.  There  are  other  allusions  before  we 
leave  the  Island  of  Manhattan  at  Spuyten  Duy- 
vil  to  follow  the  Hudson,  or  cross  into  West- 
Chester,  or  wind  along  the  waters  of  Long  Island 
Sound.  At  the  corner  of  Lexington  Avenue 
and  Eighty-first  Street  there  is  a  modern  apart- 
ment house.  In  the  year  1868  the  site  was  oc- 
cupied by  a  shanty  on  a  stony  hill.  It  was  in 
that  shanty  that  the  parents  of  Joe  Elaine  of 
James  Oppenheim's  The  Nine  Tenths  went  to 
live.  The  health  of  his  father,  a  Civil  War 
veteran,  made  a  home  in  the  country  a  neces- 
sity, and  in  that  remote  land  his  mother  felt 
that  they  were  making  a  clearing  in  the  western 
wilderness.  There  Joe  was  born  in  1872,  and 
in  his  boyhood,  he  saw  Yorkville  spring  up,  "a 

315 


316  THE  NEW  YOEK 

rubber  stamp  neighbourhood,  of  which  each 
street  was  a  brownstone  duplicate  of  the  next." 
The  years  passed,  and  still  Eighty-first  Street 
continued  to  play  its  part  in  Joe's  life.  In  a 
brownstone  boarding-house  west  of  Lexington 
Avenue  he  and  his  mother  went  to  live.  Then 
came  the  night  when  in  company  with  Myra 
Craig  he  witnessed  the  terrible  fire  in  the  loft 
building  in  Eighty-second  Street  near  Second 
Avenue,  the  fire  which  swept  away  his  printery. 
Some  forty  blocks  farther  north,  in  an  apart- 
ment over  a  drug  store  at  the  corner  of  Lenox 
Avenue  and  One  Hundred  and  Eighteenth 
Street,  was  the  real  home  of  Abe  and  Eosie 
Potash,  of  Mr.  Montague  Glass's  stories.  In 
the  play  that  home  was  placed  in  Lexington 
Avenue. 

A  New  York  house  had  much  to  do  with  the 
writing  of  Mr.  Allen's  A  Heroine  in  Bronze. 
The  man  who  has  interpreted  so  vividly  the 
moods  of  the  Kentucky  fields,  whose  birthday 
has  been  made  a  holiday  for  the  school  children 
of  the  Blue  Grass  State,  has  also,  of  recent 
years,  come  to  a  very  intimate  knowledge  of  the 
city  of  his  adoption.  One  day,  in  the  course  of 


OF  THE  NOVELISTS  317 

a  walk  down  Fifth  Avenue  and  into  the  adjoin- 
ing side  streets,  he  came  upon  a  house  that  sug- 
gested a  story.  The  house  was  on  West  Fifty- 
fourth  Street,  nearly  opposite  the  University 
Club.  Again  and  again  Mr.  Allen  returned  to 
study  it,  and  with  every  visit  the  projected  tale 
grew  in  his  brain.  At  this  period,  curiously 
enough,  the  fact  that  some  material  family  in- 
habited the  house,  meant  nothing  to  him.  That 
was  unimportant  and  unessential.  He  was  in 
that  mood  of  creation  that  had  moved  Balzac 
curtly  to  dismiss  discussion  of  certain  Pari- 
sians of  his  time  with  the  remark,  "But  let  us 
talk  of  people  who  really  exist,  I  want  to  tell 
you  about  my  Caesar  Birotteau  and  the  perfume 
he  has  just  invented."  In  the  course  of  time 
A  Heroine  in  Bronze  was  finished.  Then  came 
the  reaction.  The  author  looked  upon  the 
house  and  saw  it  as  an  habitation;  no  longer 
merely  as  a  part  of  his  story.  Perhaps  it 
would  be  wise  to  find  out  who  was  its  owner; 
who  were  its  inmates.  Chance,  or,  call  it  the 
Imp  of  the  Perverse  if  you  will,  might  have 
guided  his  hand.  Something  in  the  story  might 
parallel  too  closely  episodes  or  situations  in  the 


318  THE  NEW  YOEK 

lives  of  those  who  dwelt  in  the  house.  For  the 
first  time  Mr.  Allen  learned  that  the  residence 
was  the  home  of  John  D.  Rockefeller. 

Turn  to  the  West.  Mr.  Allen's  new  story, 
A  Cathedral  Singer,  introduces  the  Cathedral 
of  St.  John  the  Divine,  "standing  there  on  a 
high  rock  under  the  northern  sky  above  the  long 
wash  of  the  untroubled  sea,  above  the  wash  of 
the  troubled  waves  of  men";  St.  Luke's  Hos- 
pital, "cathedral  of  our  ruins,  of  our  sufferings, 
and  of  our  dust,  near  the  cathedral  of  our 
souls." 

Across  the  block  to  the  south  is  situated  a  shed-like 
two-story  building  with  dormer-windows  and  a 
crumpled,  three-sided  roof,  the  studios  of  the  Na- 
tional Academy  of  Design,  and  under  that  low,  brittle 
skylight  youth  toils  over  the  shapes  and  colours  of  the 
earth's  visible  vanishing  paradise  in  the  shadow  of  the 
cathedral  which  promises  an  unseen,  an  eternal  one. 

At  the  rear  of  the  cathedral,  across  the  roadway, 
stands  a  low  stone  wall.  Beyond  the  wall  the  earth 
sinks  down  a  precipice  to  a  green  valley  bottom  far 
below.  Out  here  is  a  rugged  slope  of  rock  and  ver- 
dure and  forest  growth  which  brings  upon  the  scene 
an  ancient  presence,  nature — nature,  the  Elysian 
Fields  of  the  art  school,  the  potter's  field  of  the  hos- 
pital, the  harvest  field  of  the  church. 


I 


THE    FERRY   AT  WEST   FORTY-SECOND  STREET.     O.   HENRY'S   "THE 
POET   AND   THE    PEASANT" 


DE  WITT  CLINTON  PARK.    O.  HENRY'S  "VANITY  AND  SOME 
SABLES" 


OF  THE  NOVELISTS  319 

Past  the  foot  of  this  strip  of  nature,  which  fronts 
the  dawn  and  is  called  Morningside  Park,  a  thorough- 
fare stretches  northward  and  southward,  level  and 
wide  and  smooth.  Over  it  the  two  opposite-moving 
streams  of  the  city's  traffic  and  travel  rush  headlong. 
Beyond  this  thoroughfare  an  embankment  of  houses 
shoves  its  mass  before  the  eyes,  and  behind  the  em- 
bankment the  city  stretches  across  flats  where  human 
beings  are  as  thick  as  river  reeds. 

Thus  within  close  reach  humanity  is  here;  the 
cathedral,  the  hospital,  the  art  school,  a  broad  high- 
way along  which,  with  their  hearthfires  flickering  un- 
der their  tents  of  stone,  camp  fire's  restless,  light- 
hearted,  heavy-hearted  Gipsies. 

But  before  Morningside  is  reached,  by  turn- 
ing into  one  of  the  side  streets  of  the  west 
eighties  you  can  find  the  actual  structure  that 
moved  Will  Irwin  to  the  writing  of  The  House 
of  Mystery.  In  one  of  the  nineties,  between 
West  End  Avenue  and  Eiverside  Drive,  is  the 
typical  "box  stoop "  house,  which  suggested  to 
Sinclair  Lewis  in  The  Trail  of  the  Hawk  the 
striking  clan  contrast  between  this  quarter  and 
the  rest  of  the  city.  This  section  has  been  de- 
scribed as  a  kind  of  "No-Man's  Land,"  in 
which  the  inhabitants  may  be  regarded  neither 
as  old  New  Yorkers,  nor  as  the  frankly  emanci- . 


320  THE  NEW  YOEK 

pated  citizens  of  Harlem.  West  End  Avenue 
has  been  called  a  social  Alsatia,  not  a  swash- 
buckling, roaring,  Bohemian  Alsatia  like  that 
depicted  by  Sir  Walter  Scott,  but  rather  a  smug 
Alsatia  into  which  families  have  crept  as  a 
place  of  refuge  against  the  time  when  they  will 
really  belong.  Beyond  is  a  vast  district  which 
is  the  Bloomsbury  or  the  Clapham  Junction, 
and  where  the  people  are  the  petites  gens  of 
New  York. 

But  on  to  the  north.  In  the  shadow  of  the 
old  Jumel  Mansion,  itself  rich  in  associations 
with  fiction  as  well  as  history,  are  the  Polo 
Grounds,  and  the  tattered  vacant  lot  that  was 
once  known  as  Manhattan  Field.  Twenty 
years  ago  many  a  short-story  writer  turned  to 
the  latter  for  a  brief  description  of  the  annual 
Yale-Princeton  football  game  that  was  then 
held  there,  and  the  coaching  parade  that  pre- 
ceded it.  At  the  Polo  Grounds  stop  for  a  mo- 
ment with  Harry  Leon  Wilson's  "Bunker 
Bean"  on  that  eventful  afternoon,  when,  for 
two  hours,  while  Giants  and  Pirates  clashed  in 
diamond  strife,  there  was  no  longer  a  Bean,  a 
Breede,  and  a  Flapper,  but  "three  merged  souls 


OF  THE  NOVELISTS  321 

in  three  volatile  bodies,  three  voices  that 
blended  in  cheers  or  execration. "  Farther  to 
the  north,  keeping  along  the  city's  western  side, 
is  Fort  Washington  Park,  introduced  in  Eu- 
pert  Hughes 's  Empty  Pockets.  Beyond  are 
what  Kipling  once  called  "the  Hudson's  un- 
kempt banks."  But  we  shall  follow  that  trail 
only  so  far  as  Dobbs  Ferry,  and  that  far  for 
the  purpose  of  a  word  about  the  house  asso- 
ciated with  Eichard  Harding  Davis 's  Eoyal 
Macklin  and  his  cousin  Beatrice.  It  was  the 
house  in  which  was  bound  up  so  much  of  EoyaPs 
boyhood,  and  the  house  to  which  he  returned 
after  the  months  of  storm,  and  stress,  and  fever 
in  Honduras.  It  was  there,  behind  the  cur- 
tains drawn  against  the  wintry  sky,  he  read  La- 
guerre's  cablegram,  and  in  vision  saw  the 
swarming  harbour  of  Marseilles,  the  swagger- 
ing Turcos  in  their  scarlet  breeches,  and  from 
every  ship's  mast  the  tri-colour  of  France. 
And  with  that  vision  he  forgot  home  ties  and 
the  affection  of  those  nearest  to  him.  His  was 
the  roving,  soldier-of-fortune  blood  of  the 
Macklins,  and  he  had  heard  the  call. 


CHAPTER  IV 

The  Cosmopolitan  City— Beekman  Place— The  Terrace- 
Recalling  Henry  Harland — Reproducing  the  Old  World. 

ON  the  city's  eastern  brink,  overlooking  Black- 
well's  Island  and  Hunter's  Point,  is  Beekman 
Place,  which  the  late  Henry  Harland  discov- 
ered some  twenty  years  ago,  and  used  in  the  au- 
tobiographical Grandison  Mather,  and  in  As  It 
Was  Written,  The  Yoke  of  the  Thorah,  Mrs. 
Peixada,  and  the  other  tales  written  under  the 
pen  name  of  Sidney  Luska. 

At  the  time  Mr.  Harland  was  living  in  Beek- 
man Place,  writing  novels  there,  and  also  work- 
ing in  the  Surrogate's  office.  This  double  la- 
bour imposed  upon  him  a  rigorous  routine, 
which  he  carried  out  with  a  self  abnegation  and 
energy  of  a  Balzac.  It  was  his  habit  to  go  to 
bed  immediately  after  dinner,  to  rise  at  two 
o'clock  in  the  morning,  and,  fortified  with 
strong  coffee,  with  a  wet  towel  bound  around 
his  head,  to  write  undisturbed  until  it  was  time 
for  breakfast,  after  which  he  started  for  his 
daily  work  downtown.  The  first  of  his  works 

322 


NEW  YOEK  OF  THE  NOVELISTS     323 

thus  produced  was  As  It  Was  Written,  the 
story  of  a  Jewish  musician,  splendidly  tragic 
in  its  conception  and  scheme.  The  first  scene 


BEEKMAN     PLACE.    GEORGE     BRONSON- 
HOWARD'S  "GOD'S  MAN" 

of  As  It  Was  Written  was  laid  at  the  Fifty-first 
Street  end  of  the  Terrace.  It  was  there  that 
Ernest  Neuman  first  found  Veronika,  one  night 
when  the  moon  had  risen,  a  huge  red  disc  out 
of  the  mist  and  smoke  across  the  river.  From 


324  THE  NEW  YORK 

the  Terrace  at  this  point  a  long  flight  of  white 
stone  steps  leads  down  almost  to  the  water 's 
edge.  In  Mrs.  Peixada  Mr.  Harland  gave  us  a 
long  and  graphic  description  of  Beekman  Place. 
He  spoke  of  this  unpretentious  chocolate-col- 
oured thoroughfare,  running  north  and  south 
for  two  blocks  from  Forty-ninth  to  Fifty-first 
Street  as  being  in  striking  contrast  to  the  rest 
of  hot  and  dusty  New  York.  In  the  book  Mrs. 
Peixada 's  home  was  identified  as  Number  46; 
the  apartment  occupied  by  Arthur  Bipley  and 
Julian  Hetzel  being  in  the  top  floor  of  Number 
43.  In  reality  no  such  numbers  exist.  But 
Number  46  was  spoken  of  as  a  corner  house, 
and  the  links  of  circumstantial  evidence  scat- 
tered through  the  book  are  convincing  enough 
to  leave  little  doubt  as  to  its  identity.  From 
the  balcony  of  the  house  occupied  by  Mrs.  Piex- 
ada  the  characters  of  this  story  looked  down 
upon  the  busy  river,  where  the  tugs  and  Sound 
steamers  kept  up  a  continual  puffing  and  whis- 
tling. Mr.  Harland  saw  a  beautiful  mother-of- 
pearl  tint  in  the  water,  and  heard  the  band 
around  the  corner  grinding  out  selections  from 
Trovatore.  Veronika  and  her  uncle  Tiluski 
lived  in  the  topmost  story  of  the  white  apart- 


OF  THE  NOVELISTS  325 

ment  house  on  Fifty-first  Street,  near  Second 
Avenue.    It  was  there  that  Neuman  murdered 
his  betrothed. 
Recently  George  Bronson-Howard  has  been 


PROVINCIAL   FRANCE 


re-discovering  Beekman  Place,  and  finding  in  it 
a  background  for  some  of  the  scenes  of  God's 
Mem.  He  enriches  it  with  an  additional  "c," 
calling  it  Beeekman  Place,  and  adorning  it  with 
a  little  square  that  is  not  there,  a  little  imagi- 


326  THE  NEW  YOEK 

nary  centre  square  of  elm  trees  surrounded  by 
an  iron  railing.  But  there  is  the  river,  with 
its  red  and  green  lights  at  night,  and  the  back- 
yards running  down  to  the  water,  with  landing 
stages  to  hook  up  a  boat.  And  in  Beeckman 
Place,  in  the  tale,  is  the  house  of  a  retired  rig- 
ging maker,  a  Londoner,  who  liked  to  believe 
that  he  was  in  Wapping  Old  Stairs,  his  birth- 
place— and  who,  by  a  little  play  of  the  imagina- 
tion, could  see  the  East  India  Docks,  and  the 
wharves  of  Eotherhithe  and  the  murky  waters 
of  the  Thames  winding  their  way  towards 
Graves  End. 

For  in  the  great  city  there  are  corners, 
streets,  structures  that  reflect  the  cosmopoli- 
tanism of  New  York's  human  ingredients. 
Even  complete  neighbourhoods  that  might  have 
been  transplanted  from  Old  World  cities  may 
here  and  there  be  found.  There  is  a  legend 
of  a  Frenchman,  suffering  from  nostalgic  du 
pays,  who,  on  the  occasional  days  of  fog,  was  in 
the  habit  of  pacing  to  and  fro  the  length  of  the 
Madison  Square  Garden  Arcade  that  runs 
along  Twenty-sixth  Street  and  Madison  Ave- 
nue. In  fancy  he  was  walking  in  the  Eue  de 
Bivoli.  Under  one  of  the  arches  of  the  Wil- 


OF  THE  NOVELISTS  327 

liamsburg  Bridge  there  is  a  bit  of  old  Spain. 
No  corner  of  Havana,  of  Caracas,  or  of  Mexico 
City  has  more  the  flavour  of  Seville.  Go  up  to 
a  comparatively  modern  West  Side  block  in  the 


ITALY 


fifties  and  you  will  find  the  long,  vine-covered 
building  shadowed  by  a  beautiful  Gothic  tower. 
It  is  a  transplanted  section  of  the  older  Lon- 
don. Though  rather  over  decorated  and  em- 
bellished with  too  many  carvings,  much  of  the 


328 


NEW  YORK  OF  THE  NOVELISTS     329 

new  architecture  of  upper  Broadway  and  on 
the  Riverside  Drive  aims  to  reproduce  the  ef- 
fect of  the  modern  Lutetia  in  the  streets  about 
the  Arc  de  Triomphe  and  the  Champs  de  Mars. 
In  one  of  the  forties,  not  far  from  Fifth  Ave- 
nue, there  is  a  building  modelled  on  a  palace  of 
the  Grand  Canal  of  Venice.  On  the  Drive 
Provincial  France  is  seen  in  a  reproduction  of 
the  Chateau  de  Chenonceau,  framed  by  beauti- 
ful lawns,  overlooking  the  Hudson.  The  Ital- 
ian spirit  has  been  reflected  in  certain  buildings 
to  be  found  in  the  neighbourhood  of  Gramercy 
Park.  Several  corners  in  this  section  might 
be  set  down  in  the  residential  parts  of  Milan 
without  disturbing  the  picture.  On  upper 
West  End  Avenue  complete  blocks  of  houses 
hold  an  effect  of  Antwerp.  The  New  York  of 
squatter  occupancy  is  now  nearly  a  thing  of  the 
past,  but  even  to-day  one  may  find  an  occasional 
hut  on  a  rock  which  suggests  southwestern  Ire- 
land; while  in  the  western  part  of  Greenwich 
Village,  close  to  the  water  front,  there  is  a  nar- 
row lane,  without  sidewalks  and  paved  with 
rough  stones,  which  to  the  eye  has  every  aspect 
of  an  alley  way  in  London 's  Whitechapel. 


CHAPTEE  V 

More  Roads  to  the  North — Laguerre's — Pelham  Bay — The 
Boston  Post  Road — White  Plains — Pound  Ridge — "Keeping 
up  with  Lizzie" — Sleepy  Hollow. 

IN  the  early  days  of  his  career  as  a  writing 
man  the  late  F.  Hopkinson  Smith  discovered 
Laguerre's,  "that  most  delightful  of  French 
inns/'  on  the  banks  of  the  Bronx,  and  told  of 
its  quaint  old  world  atmosphere  in  the  tales 
which  made  up  A  Day  at  Laguerre's  and  Other 
Stories.  He  went  back  to  it  again  at  the  very 
end  of  his  life,  in  the  last  novel  that  he  wrote, 
the  novel  which  did  not  appear  in  book  form  un- 
til several  months  after  the  author's  death. 
The  reader  who  sees  the  old  inn  as  it  is  to-day 
must  remember  that  Felix  Q'Day  is  a  book 
of  the  New  York  of  ten  years  ago.  To  La- 
guerre's, for  a  delightful  day's  outing,  the  two 
old  painters  of  the  Studio  Building  took  Felix 
and  Masie.  It  was  a  familiar  haunt  to  them; 
there  they  often  lunched  and  painted,  and  on  the 
occasion  in  question,  Sam,  being  a  familiar  on 

330 


NEW  YOEK  OF  THE  NOVELISTS     331 

the  premises,  first  pre-empted  a  summer  house 
covered  with  vines,  already  tinged  by  the 
touches  of  autumn's  fingers,  and  then  insisted 
in  a  loud  voice  on  chairs  and  table  cloths. 

When  he  was  writing  Felix  0  'Day  Mr.  Smith, 
though  still  in  his  full  vigour  and  activity,  was 
well  on  into  his  eighth  decade.  In  his  descrip- 
tion of  this  old  inn  he  was  drawing  upon  mem- 
ory. His  earlier  pictures,  embodied  in  A  Day 
at  Laguerre's  were  almost  always  based  on 
living  impressions,  notes  jotted  down  of  an 
evening  after  June  hours  spent  with  special 
cronies  on  the  banks  of  the  winding,  narrow 
Bronx.  Then — about  1890 — from  the  windows 
of  the  passing  railway  trains  one  could  see  the 
"tall  trees  trailing  their  branches  in  the  still 
stream — hardly  a  dozen  yards  wide — the  white 
ducks  paddling  together,  and  the  queer  punts 
drawn  upon  the  shelving  shore  or  tied  to  soggy, 
patched-up  landing  stairs. "  Alighting  from 
the  train  at  Williamsbridge,  crossing  the  water, 
passing  the  tapestry  factory,  a  short  walk  took 
one  to  the  home  of  Henri  Lemaire,  the  original 
Frangois  Laguerre.  Like  Laguerre  in  the 
story,  Lemaire  was  a  maker  of  passe  partouts. 


332  THE  NEW  YOEK 

He  was  living  until  a  few  years  ago,  and  had  a 
shop  somewhere  on  Sixth  Avenue.  A  quarter 
of  a  century  since  Laguerre's  was  unique  in  its 
mouldiness  and  charm.  But  now  everything  is 
changed.  No  more  are  the  paddling  ducks. 
The  old  house  and  the  punts  have  gone  to  de- 
cay, the  stream  has  lost  its  quaintness.  Out  of 
respect  to  the  romance  of  yesterday  the  home- 
ward bound  commuter  or  New  Eochelle,  or 
Greenwich,  or  Stamford  passing  the  station  at 
Williamsbridge  should  keep  his  eyes  on  his  eve- 
ning paper.  Sic  transit! 

From  Laguerre's  find  the  way  somehow  over 
to  the  Boston  Post  Eoad,  preferably  pursuing 
the  trail  to  the  southeast  for  a  brief  glimpse  at 
what  little  remains  of  Poe's  cottage  at  Ford- 
ham,  and  then  passing  the  Zoological  Gardens 
and  coming  to  the  turn  at  Pelham  Parkway.  It 
was  somewhere  along  here  that  the  young  man 
with  the  white  hair  driving  his  car  overtook  the 
boy  scout  of  the  Eichard  Harding  Davis  story, 
a  chance  meeting  fraught  with  world-wide  re- 
sults. Somewhere  in  the  same  neighbourhood, 
though  probably  on  one  of  the  thoroughfares 
leading  to  the  west,  was  the  sinister  road  house 


OF  THE  NOVELISTS  333 

that  played  a  part  in  the  same  author's  "The 
Frame-Up."  Crossing  the  broad  stone  bridge 
near  the  city  limits  the  waters  of  the  bay  are 
seen  dancing  in  the  sunshine.  They  conjure  up 
memories  of  a  tale  by  Gouverneur  Morris 
called,  if  the  Pilgrim  is  not  mistaken,  "A  Per- 
fect Gentleman  of  Pelham  Bay."  A  little  far- 
ther along  the  Post  Eoad,  on  the  left  hand  side, 
is  a  road  house  which  was  used  by  George  Barr 
McCutcheon  in  The  Hollow  of  Her  Hand.  It 
was  a  stopping  place  for  certain  of  the  charac- 
ters on  the  journey  between  New  York  and 
"Southlook."  The  original  of  "Southlook" 
was  the  Sara  Eandall  estate  on  the  South  be- 
tween Port  Chester  and  Greenwich.  The  name 
"Southlook"  came  from  the  fact  that  Mr.  Mc- 
Cutcheon, at  the  time  of  the  writing  of  The 
Hollow  of  Her  Hand  was  living  in  a  place 
known  as  "Westlook"  at  Kennebunkport, 
Maine.  Incidentally  Booth  Tarkington  has 
since  spent  two  or  three  summers  at  "West- 
look."  From  Greenwich  go  back  into  the 
Eidges  that  lie  partly  in  New  York  and  partly 
in  Connecticut  and  you  will  find  the  scenes  of 
Eobert  W.  Chambers 's  The  Hidden  Children. 


334  THE  NEW  YORK 

The  exact  ridge  is  not  Long  Eidge,  or  High 
Eidge,  but  Pound  Eidge.  As  Mr.  Chambers  is  a 
historian  as  well  as  a  novelist,  everything  in 
the  tale  has  been  made  as  accurate  as  care  could 
make  it.  The  scene  is  the  scene  of  Carleton's 
Eaid  in  the  Eevolutionary  War  when  the  British 
burned  the  town  and  Major  Lockwood's  house. 
In  most  instances  the  names  used  are  those  of 
the  actual  persons  of  the  period.  The  Hidden 
Children  deals  not  only  with  the  ridges,  but  also 
with  Bedford,  Northcastle,  and  Stamford.  It 
touches  also  White  Plains,  where,  by  the  way, 
there  was  laid  a  court  room  scene  in  Gertrude 
Atherton's  Patience  Sparhawk  and  Her  Times. 
Occasionally,  in  the  course  of  the  writing  his 
account  of  these  rambles,  the  Pilgrim  has  been 
hampered  rather  than  helped  by  those  novelists 
whose  trails  he  has  tried  to  follow.  A  certain 
house,  or  city  street,  or  suburban  lane,  has  been 
identified  as  the  scene  of  some  particular  tale 
or  episode.  The  author,  approached  for  cor- 
roboration,  has  conceded  the  shrewdness  of  the 
guess.  "But,"  he  has  at  times  gone  on  to  say, 
"perhaps  it  would  be  better  not  to  put  that 
down  in  print.  So  and  so  might  not  like  it,  or 


OF  THE  NOVELISTS  335 

it  might  get  me  in  trouble  at  the  Trellis  Club,  or 
with  the  Gramercy  Park  Association,  or  the 
Greenwich  Village  Association."  So  before 
saying  a  word  to  Mr.  Irving  Bacheller  about 
the  particular  town  of  that  author's  Keeping 
Up  with  Lizzie  and  Charge  It,  the  Pilgrim  jotted 
down  his  guess,  basing  his  deductions  on  the 
pages  of  the  printed  book.  That,  he  pointed 
out  to  Mr.  Bacheller,  relieved  him  of  any  pos- 
sible charge  of  indiscretion  or  violation  of  con- 
fidence. The  people  of  Pointview  were  the  peo- 
ple of  any  Connecticut  shore  town  in  the  mat- 
ters of  speech  and  deportment.  As  for  the 
human  nature  of  the  story,  that  is  pretty  much 
the  same  everywhere.  So  the  Pilgrim  a  little 
belligerently  suggests  that  Pointview  is  Eiver- 
side,  Connecticut,  or  a  town  very  close  to  it. 
Chesterville  is  unquestionably  Port  Chester, 
New  York,  and  the  Byron  Bridge  of  the  tale  the 
Byram  Bridge  over  which  the  Boston  Post  Eoad 
crosses  from  the  Middle  States  into  New  Eng- 
land. 

No  portion  of  New  York  or  its  environments 
has  been  more  sympathetically  and  tenderly 
treated  than  in  Washington  Irving 's  Legend  of 


336  THE  NEW  YORK 

Sleepy  Hollow.  Following  the  post  road  to  the 
north  from  Tarrytown  one  may  from  the  count- 
less associations  of  stone  and  wood  readily  re- 
evoke  the  quaint  figure  of  Ichabod  Crane  astride 
his  horse  Gunpowder  in  the  wild  flight  from  the 
Galloping  Hessian.  The  little  valley  among 
high  hills  and  the  small  brook  gliding  through  it 
remain  much  the  same  as  in  the  days  when  Irv- 
ing was  living  at  Sunnyside.  The  old  church 
where  Ichabod  instructed  Katrina  Van  Tassel 
in  psalmody  is  still  to  be  seen  surrounded  by 
locust  trees  and  lofty  elms  from  among  which 
"its  decent  whitewashed  walls  shine  modestly 
forth,  like  Christian  purity  beaming  through  the 
shades  of  retirement.  A  gentle  slope  descends 
from  it  to  a  silver  sheet  of  water,  bordered  by 
high  trees,  between  which  peeps  may  be  caught 
at  the  blue  hills  of  the  Hudson."  This  church 
was  built  in  the  seventeenth  century.  From  the 
surrounding  churchyard  the  Headless  Horse- 
man was  said  to  issue  nightly.  Ichabod 's 
fright  began  when  passing  the  tree  by  which 
Major  Andre  was  captured.  His  experience 
with  the  Headless  Horseman  began  at  the 
bridge,  about  two  hundred  yards  farther  on. 


THE  TRAVELLER  BY  THE  TRAINS  OF  THE  NEW  YORK,  NEW  HAVEN  AND 
HARTFORD  RAILWAY  PASSING  THE  STATION  AT  WILLIAMSBRIDGE,  CAN 
CATCH  A  GLIMPSE  THROUGH  THE  TREES  OF  A  RAPIDLY  DECAYING 
FRAME  HOUSE  ON  THE  BANKS  OF  THE  WINDING,  NARROW  BRONX. 
ONCE  UPON  A  TIME  IT  WAS  LAGUERRE'S,  CHARACTERISED  BY  F.  HOP- 
KINSON  SMITH  AS  THE  "MOST  DELIGHTFUL  OF  FRENCH  INNS  IN  THE 
QUAINTEST  OF  FRENCH  SETTLEMENTS" 


OF  THE  NOVELISTS  337 

It  was  not  until  the  old  church  had  been  reached 
that  the  Headless  Horseman,  rising  in  his  stir- 
rups, hurled  the  pumpkin  which  laid  the  fleeing 
schoolmaster  low.  The  old  Mott  homestead, 
believed  to  have  been  the  home  of  Katrina  Van 
Tassel,  was  destroyed  twenty  years  ago.  The 
schoolhouse  in  which  Ichabod  Crane  taught  and 
which  was  harassed  by  Brom  Bones  and  his  wild 
cronies  has  also  passed  away.  Near  by  may 
be  found  the  ruins  of  the  haunted  hill  of  Geof- 
frey Crayon's  Chronicles. 


CHAPTER  VI 

Harlem  Heights — The  Neutral  Ground — Scenes  of  "Chim- 
mie  Fadden"— The  Country  of  "The  Spy." 

IN  one  of  the  sketches  of  Made  in  France,  which 
was  a  collection  of  short  tales  from  Guy  de  Mau- 
passant told  with  a  United  States  twist,  the 
late  Henry  Cuyler  Bunner  described  one  of 
those  quaint  old  frame  houses  with  great  gar- 
dens which,  until  ten  or  a  dozen  years  ago,  were 
to  be  found  here  and  there  throughout  the  up- 
per West  Side.  It  was  in  the  garden  that  the 
hero  of  the  tale  came  upon  the  strange  old 
couple  pirouetting  through  their  ghostly  dance. 
As  to  the  actual  situation  of  the  house  and  gar- 
den there  was  very  little  said  positively.  It  was 
somewhere  west  of  Central  Park,  rather  far  up, 
and  with  this  as  guide  the  reader  who  knew  this 
part  of  the  city  in  those  days,  before  the  sweep- 
ing invasion  of  the  real  estate  agent,  the  archi- 
tect and  the  mason,  swept  away  the  traces  of  the 
island's  earlier  history,  may  make  such  selec- 
tion as  suits  his  taste.  Whatever  the  selection 
may  be,  the  reader  will  not  have  to  journey  far 
to  find  the  scenes  of  Professor  Brander  Mat- 

338 


NEW  YOEK  OF  THE  NOVELISTS     339 

thews 's  Tom  Paulding,  which  were  laid  about 
what  is  now  the  Riverside  Drive.  The  open- 
ing chapter  of  the  book  treated  of  West  Ninety- 
third  Street,  and  years  after  it  was  written 
the  author  took  up  his  residence  in  this  street, 
and  lives  near  there  at  the  present  day. 

Among  the  parts  of  New  York  which  have 
been  ignored  in  fiction  Harlem  is  strikingly 
prominent.  Perhaps  this  is  in  a  measure  due 
to  the  swiftness  of  its  growth  and  the  constant 
changes  in  its  architectural  aspect  and  social 
conditions  from  year  to  year.  The  ubiquitous 
Mr.  Fawcett  occasionally  alluded  to  it,  Mrs. 
Anna  Katharine  Green  used  it  as  the  back- 
ground of  one  or  two  of  her  sensations,  but  it 
wholly  lacks  the  charm  of  maturity  which  ap- 
peals to  the  literary  temperament,  and  has, 
justly  or  unjustly,  been  regarded  as  dull  and 
commonplace.  Moving  up  the  Heights,  we 
come  to  the  Jumel  mansion,  frequented  by  so 
many  of  the  great  personages  of  our  national 
history,  and  one  of  the  reputed  places  of  con- 
cealment of  Fenimore  Cooper's  Harvey  Birch. 
Beneath  the  Heights  to  the  northwest  stretches 
the  broad  expanse  of  the  Hudson  as  the  Spy 
and  Captain  Wharton  saw  it  during  their  flights 


340  THE  NEW  YORK 

from  the  Virginian  troopers.  To  the  north  the 
broken  fragments  of  the  Highlands,  throwing 
up  their  lofty  heads  above  masses  of  fog  that 
hung  over  the  water,  and  by  which  the  course  of 
the  river  could  be  traced  into  the  bosom  of  hills 
whose  conical  summits  were  grouping  together, 
one  behind  another,  in  that  disorder  which 
might  be  supposed  to  have  succeeded  their  gi- 
gantic but  fruitless  efforts  to  stop  the  progress 
of  the  flood,  and  emerging  from  these  confused 
piles  the  river,  as  if  rejoicing  at  its  release 
from  the  struggle,  expanding  into  a  wide  bay, 
which  was  ornamented  into  a  few  fertile  and 
low  points  that  jutted  humbly  into  its  broad 
basin. "  Near  by  were  the  scenes  of  Janice 
Meredith  when  Mr.  Paul  Leicester  Ford,  car- 
ried his  narrative  from  Middle  New  Jersey  to 
the  northern  end  of  Manhattan  Island ;  whisking 
the  characters  of  the  book  to  Harlem  Heights, 
and  showing  us  Washington  at  a  time  when  the 
colonial  cause  was  beginning  to  look  dark  and 
hopeless.  A  group  of  horsemen  on  a  slight 
eminence  of  ground  were  watching  the  move- 
ments of  the  British  men  of  war,  and  the  dis- 
comfiture of  the  raw  American  recruits.  Later 
the  action  shifted  to  the  Eoger  Morris  house, 


OF  THE  NOVELISTS  341 

where  Washington  had  his  headquarters  and 
Mr.  Meredith  and  his  daughter  were  brought  to 
answer  to  a  charge  of  conveying  to  the  British 
vastly  important  information  as  to  the  lack  of 
powder  in  the  American  army. 

The  country  at  the  northern  end  of  Manhat- 
ten  Island  and  beyond  the  Harlem  was  in  a 
measure  the  inspiration  of  Fenimore  Cooper's 
The  Spy.  Every  crag  and  valley  was  the  scene 
of  one  of  the  skirmishes  between  partisans  of 
the  rival  causes  in  the  Eevolutionary  period; 
every  road  knew  the  wanderings  of  Harvey 
Birch.  The  opening  pages  of  the  book  find 
General  Washington,  under  the  name  of 
Harper,  pursuing  his  way  through  one  of  the 
numerous  little  valleys  of  Westchester,  which 
became  after  the  occupation  of  New  York  by  the 
British  army  common  ground  until  the  end  of 
the  war.  The  towns  in  the  southern  part  of 
the  country  near  the  Harlem  Eiver  were,  for 
the  most  part,  under  English  dominion,  while 
those  of  northern  Westchester  were  in  sympa- 
thy with  the  Eevolutionary  cause.  "The  Lo- 
custs," the  home  of  the  Whartons,  which  was  a 
meeting  place  for  the  officers  of  King  George's 
army,  stood  on  the  side  of  a  hill  overlooking 


342  THE  NEW  YOEK 

the  distant  waters  of  Long  Island  Sound,  the 
scene  of  Water  Witch.  "The  Locusts"  down 
to  present  times  has  been  occupied  by  descend- 
ants of  the  family  that  Cooper,  when  living  at 
Closet  Hall — the  home  of  the  Littlepage  family 
in  Satanstoe — was  in  the  habit  of  visiting  on  his 
little  journeys  inland.  The  appearance  of  this 
house,  which  played  so  important  a  part  in  The 
Spy,  had  changed  but  little  since  the  time  when 
Cooper  knew  it.  All  the  country  to  the  north  of 
the  Harlem,  stretching  from  the  Hudson  to  the 
Sound,  is  rich  with  associations  of  Cooper's  first 
great  historical  novel.  Near  by  at  "The  Four 
Corners"  is  the  site  where  stood  the  building 
from  which  Harvey  Birch  escaped  disguised  in 
Betty  Flanagan's  clothes.  The  village  of  Four 
Corners  was  a  cluster  of  small  and  dilapidated 
houses  at  a  spot  where  two  roads  intersected  at 
right  angles.  The  hilly  country  between  Spuy- 
ten  Duyvil  and  Yonkers  was  the  scene  of  the 
flight  and  wanderings  of  the  pedlar  and  Cap- 
tain Wharton,  after  the  escape  from  the  farm- 
house in  which  the  English  officer  was  impris- 
oned awaiting  execution,  and  from  which  he 
was  rescued  by  Harvey's  strategy.  The  cave 
in  which  they  took  refuge  when  pursued  by  the 


OF  THE  NOVELISTS  343 

troop  of  American  horse  was  in  the  Washington 
rocks  at  Park  Hill. 

Turning  from  the  fiction  which  finds  its  back- 
ground in  the  last  years  of  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury to  fiction  which  very  distinctively  belongs 
to  the  closing  years  of  the-  nineteenth  century, 
a  few  miles  from  "The  Locusts"  was  the  house 
which  was  the  scene  of  the  exploits,  belligerent 
and  amorous,  of  Edward  W.  Townsend's  Chim- 
mie  Fadden.  The  little  Bowery  boy,  it  will  be 
remembered,  after  his  reclamation  by  Miss 
Fannie  was  taken  as  footman  to  the  country 
residence  of  "His  Whiskers."  It  was  there 
that  he  entered  polite  society,  and  wooed  and 
won  "De  Duchess."  The  original  of  the  coun- 
try home  of  "His  Whiskers"  was  the  residence 
of  Mr.  Gillig,  ex-Commodore  of  the  Larchmont 
Yacht  Club,  at  Larchmont,  overlooking  the 
Sound.  To  this  great  house  the  author  of  Chim- 
mie  Fadden  had  been  a  frequent  visitor.  Fifty 
or  a  hundred  feet  away  from  the  northern  end 
of  the  house  is  the  stable  to  which  "His  Whisk- 
ers" was  in  the  habit  of  taking  Chames  when- 
ever he  deemed  that  the  young  man  was  in  need 
of  more  vigorous  redemption  than  Miss  Fan- 
nie 's  instruction  could  supply. 


CHAPTER  VII 

Greenpoint  and  Edgar  Fawcett — F.  Hopkinson  Smith's 
"Tom  Grogan" — Over  the  River — Columbia  Heights  and 
"The  Harbour"— The  Brooklyn  Water  Front. 

IN  An  Ambitious  Woman  Edgar  Fawcett  gave 
us  a  description  of  an  outlying  portion  of  New 
York  strikingly  adequate  in  its  scope  and  con- 
viction. Of  Greenpoint  he  said  that  its  sover- 
eign dreariness  still  remains.  He  dwelt  at 
length  on  its  melancholy,  its  ugliness,  its  torpor, 
its  neglect.  To  him  it  always  had  a  certain 
"  goblin  hideousness  keenly  picturesque. ' ' 
When  writing  An  Ambitious  Woman  he  went 
time  and  time  again  to  Greenpoint  to  study  its 
conditions  and  atmosphere — to  get  all  its  tragic- 
comic  suggestiveness  well  in  memory.  The 
background  of  the  story — the  black,  loamy 
meadow  and  the  sodden  bridge  and  the  little 
inky  creek,  and  the  iris-necked  flock  of  pigeons 
and  the  dull,  dirty  smoke  from  the  factories — 
was  all  very  real  to  him. 

The  Twinings  lived  in  a  three-story  wooden 

344 


NEW  YORK  OF  THE  NOVELISTS     345 

house  of  a  yellowish  drab  colour,  with  trellised 
piazza,  Corinthian  pillars  and  high  basement 
windows,  in  one  of  the  retired  side  streets  of 
Greenpoint.  A  few  such  houses  were  to  be 
found  until  recent  years,  but  the  book  offers  no 
evidence  that  the  author  had  in  mind  any  par- 
ticular structure.  Claire  Twining  before  the 
encounter  with  Josie,  which  marked  such  a 
crisis  in  her  life,  was  standing  on  a  little  hill 
which  overlooked  the  lights  of  the  city.  This 
hill  from  which  Mr.  Fawcett  described  his 
heroine  as  "watching  the  wrinkled  river,  drab 
and  tremulous,  the  boats  and  beyond  the  church 
spires  of  New  York,"  was  probably  Pottery 
Hill,  which  was  razed  about  twenty-five  years 
ago.  Crossing  two  rivers  and  the  city  between 
we  find  at  Hoboken  the  little  green  park  de- 
scribed in  the  same  author's  A  Daughter  of 
Silence.  This  book  was  a  favourite  novel  of 
the  late  Colonel  Ingersoll.  In  this  park,  which 
may  be  seen  from  the  river,  Guy  Arbuthnot  and 
Brenda  first  met. 

The  opening  pages  of  F.  Hopkinson  Smith's 
Tom  Grogan  dealt  with  the  work  about  the 
Lighthouse  Department  and  the  Government 


346  THE  NEW  YORK 

dock  at  St.  George,  Staten  Island.  Babcock, 
building  the  sea  wall,  came  upon  Tom  Grogan 
in  the  depot  yard  with  its  coal  docks  and  ma- 
chine shops.  Over  the  hill  in  Stapleton,  thinly 
disguised  in  the  story  as  Eockville,  was  Tom 
Grogan 's  house  and  stables.  The  house,  a 
plain,  square  frame  dwelling,  with  front  and 
rear  verandas,  protected  by  the  arching 
branches  of  a  big  sycamore-tree  and  surrounded 
by  a  small  garden  filled  with  flaming  dahlias 
and  chrysanthemums,  was,  until  a  few  years 
ago,  occupied  by  the  daughter  and  son-in-law  of 
the  original  of  the  character,  who  herself  lived 
in  a  house  of  recent  erection  only  a  stone's 
throw  distant.  Directly  in  the  rear  of  this 
house  could  be  found  the  stables,  the  stable  yard 
and  the  pump  and  horse  trough,  all  of  which 
played  a  conspicuous  part  in  the  tale.  It  was 
while  in  the  larger  of  the  two  stables  that  Tom 
was  struck  down  by  the  hammer  in  the  hand 
of  Dan  McGaw,  and  through  the  window  at 
the  side  came  the  light  by  which  she  saw  his 
face  before  the  blow  fell.  The  long  room  in 
which  Judge  Bowker  gave  the  decision  which 
settled  finally  the  question  of  the  award  of  the 


OF  THE  NOVELISTS  347 

contract,  and  allowed  Tom  Grogan  the  right  to 
use  her  husband's  signature  in  carrying  on  her 
business,  was  not,  as  might  be  supposed,  in  the 
Town  Hall  proper,  but  in  a  room  directly  over 
the  Stapleton  Post-Office.  Across  the  square 
was  a  one-story  frame  structure,  which  was  the 
original'of  O'Leary's  saloon,  where  McGaw  and 
Crimmins  hatched  their  plots  against  Tom. 
The  experiences  which  went  to  make  this  book 
were  gathered  during  Mr.  Smith's  connection 
with  the  Government  Lighthouse  Department  as 
contractor.  It  was  then  that  he  came  in  contact 
with  Mrs.  Bridget  Morgan,  stevedore,  the  orig- 
inal Tom  Grogan. 

Then  there  is  the  New  York  that  lies  "over 
the  river."  That,  however,  has  been  a  com- 
paratively neglected  phase.  In  fiction  it  has  no 
such  significance  as  has  the  "Surrey  Side  of 
the  Thames ' '  or  the  '  '  rive  gauche. ' ' 

Whatever  of  his  books  may  be  preferred  by 
the  reader,  it  will  usually  be  found  that  among 
the  bits  of  London  of  which  Dickens  wrote  there 
is  none  that  has  exercised  a  greater  and  more 
holding  a  charm  than  the  debtor's  prison  of  the 
Marshalsea.  To  the  normal  well-dressed  Lon- 


348  THE  NEW  YORK 

doner  residing,  let  us  say,  somewhere  in  Ham- 
mersmith or  the  neighbourhood  of  St.  John's 
Wood,  the  vast  region  "over  the  river"  means 
something  a  little  mysterious  and  weird.  Blot 
out  that  part  of  Paris  which  lies  "over  the 
river,"  and  the  loss  to  literature  would  be  in- 
finitely more  far  reaching.  There  are  the 
streets  trod  by  Messieurs  Athos,  Porthos, 
Aramis  and  D'Artagnan,  the  scenes  of  one-half 
of  what  is  greatest  in  the  Comedie  Humaine,  of 
Jean  Valjean's  skulking  pilgrimages,  of  the 
light  loves,  the  fourberies,  the  poignant  suffer- 
ings of  Murger  's  men  and  women.  The  Thames 
and  the  Seine!  Both  are  pregnant  with  liter- 
ary significance.  We  have  two  rivers ;  but  our 
novelists  seem  to  find  no  inspiration  in  studying 
them  by  light  or  dark;  our  poets  don't  pipe 
their  little  lays  over  their  darkness,  their  mys- 
tery, their  tragedy,  their  treachery,  their 
silence.  For  the  "over  the  river"  in  New 
York  fiction  we  must  rely  on  the  future.  Yet 
not  far  from  the  river  on  the  Brooklyn  side, 
near  to  the  Sands  Street  gate  of  the  Navy  Yard, 
is  a  series  of  little  alleys  quite  as  dirty,  as  pic- 
turesque, as  rich  in  suggestion  as  the  alleys  of 


OF  THE  NOVELISTS  349 

Dickens 's  London.  Again  might  be  pointed  out 
Fort  Lee  and  the  Sound  side  of  Staten  Island, 
with  the  looming  chimneys  of  Constable  Hook. 
Years  ago,  in  one  of  those  juvenile  publications 
then  the  source  of  endless  delight,  appeared 
serially  a  story  of  which  the  mise-en-scene  was 
on  board  a  canal-boat  which  lay  at  anchor  in 
the  Bay  of  Gowanus.  Gowanus !  There  is  one 
reader  at  least  to  whom  the  sight  or  sound  of 
that  word  still  thrills  and  charms — by  whom 
that  early  impression  of  darkness  and  gloom 
shall  never  be  forgotten. 

The  old  Wall  Street  Ferry  was  more  con- 
venient. But  it  is  gone.  So  some  day  cross  by 
the  Fulton  Street  Ferry,  and,  from  the  Brook- 
lyn end,  follow  the  street  that,  running  south- 
ward, parallels  the  water  front.  Under  foot 
rough  cobblestones,  and  here  and  there  a  sea  of 
mud.  To  the  right  great  warehouses.  Every 
hundred  feet  or  so  long  tunnels,  most  of  them 
arched,  through  which  one  catches  glimpses  of 
the  waters  of  the  East  Eiver.  On  the  left 
smaller  warehouses,  of  a  drab  colour,  the  kind 
of  warehouses  that  one  finds  on  the  banks  of  the 
Thames.  Then  a  saloon  or  two,  more  smaller 


I 


H   M 

fc    M 

sl 


350 


NEW  YORK  OP  THE  NOVELISTS    351 

warehouses,  and  then  a  kind  of  battlement,  ris- 
ing sheer,  crested  with  a  garden.  For  a  time 
the  street  seems  a  street  not  only  without  an 
end  or  a  turning,  but  without  intercepting 
streets.  You  reach  a  point  where,  looking 
ahead  and  looking  behind  as  far  as  the  eye  can 
see,  there  is  no  perceptible  break  in  the  walls 
that  hem  it  in.  It  is  as  if  you  were  to  go  on 
forever  with  no  escape  save  by  the  retracing 
of  the  footsteps.  Finally,  when  you  come  to 
the  point  where  it  is  possible  to  climb  to  the 
heights  above,  you  do  so  by  means  of  a  series 
of  steps  that  lead  up  to  Montague  Terrace. 

It  was  this  strange  neighbourhood,  this  con- 
trast between  the  sordid  street  below  and  the 
splendid  residences  above,  that  stood  out  with 
particular  vividness  in  Ernest  Poolers  The 
Harbour.  This  pilgrimage  is  in  no  sense  criti- 
cal, yet  there  can  be  no  harm  in  pointing  out 
the  enduring  merits  of  that  book — that  is  of  the 
first  half  of  the  book — especially  as  it  reflects  as 
few  other  novels  of  New  York  have  done  a  pass- 
ing phase  of  the  city's  life  and  manners.  And 
the  strange  part  of  it  is  that  to  Ernest  Poole 
these  scenes  to  which  he  laid  so  definite  a  claim 


352 


THE  NEW  YOEK 


came  to  him,  not  through  inheritance,  but  by  rea- 
son of  a  chance  discovery.  The  story  of  the 
book  is  that  of  a  boy  to  whose  eyes  the  world 


THE  GARDENS  LOOKING  TOWARD  THE  IN- 
NEE  BAY.  ERNEST  POOLE'S  "THE 
HARBOUR" 


unfolds  in  the  form  of  New  York  harbour  as  it 
is  seen  from  that  part  of  Brooklyn  known  as 
Columbia  Heights.  Ever  since  he  could  re- 


OF  THE  NOVELISTS  353 

member  he  had  looked  down  from  the  back  win- 
dows of  his  home  upon  a  harbour  that  to  him 
was  strange  and  terrible.  He  was  glad  that 
the  house  itself  was  up  so  high.  Its  front  was 
on  a  sedate  old  street,  and  within  it  everything 
felt  safe. 

But  from  the  porch  at  the  back  of  our  house  you 
went  three  steps  down  to  a  long,  narrow  garden — at 
least  the  garden  seemed  long  to  me — and  you  walked 
to  the  end  of  the  garden  and  peered  through  the  ivy- 
covered  bars  of  the  fence,  as  I  had  done  when  I  was 
so  little  that  I  could  barely  walk  alone,  you  had  the 
first  mighty  thrill  of  your  life.  For  you  found  that 
through  a  hole  in  the  ivy  you  could  see  a  shivery  dis- 
tance straight  down  through  the  air  to  a  street  below. 
You  found  that  the  two  iron  posts,  one  at  either  end 
of  the  fence,  were  warm  when  you  touched  them,  had 
holes  in  the  top,  had  smoke  coming  out — were  chim- 
neys! And  slowly  it  dawned  upon  your  mind  that 
this  garden  of  yours  was  nothing  at  all  but  the  roof 
of  a  grey  old  building — which  your  nurse  told  you 
vaguely  had  been  a  "warehouse"  long  ago  when  the 
waters  of  the  harbour  had  come  'way  in  to  the  street 
below.  The  old  ' '  wharves ' '  had  been  down  there,  she 
said.  What  was  a  "wharf"?  It  was  a  "dock,"  she 
told  me.  And  she  said  that  a  family  of  "dockers" 
lived  in  the  building  under  our  garden.  They  were 
all  that  was  left  in  it  now  but  "old  junk."  Who  was 


354     NEW  YORK  OF  THE  NOVELISTS 

Old  Junk,  a  man  or  a  woman?    And  what  in  the 
world  were  Dockers  ? 

The  composite  Eichard  Harding  Davis  hero 
is  invariably  afflicted  with  homesickness  when 
in  lands  remote,  and  with  the  wanderlust  when 
he  is  at  home.  In  the  Hotel  Continental  or  the 
Hotel  Villa  de  France  in  Tangier  he  yearns  for 
certain  odours  and  noises  of  Fourteenth  Street, 
just  as  Stanley  Ortheris  yearned  for  the  sight, 
and  sounds,  and  smells  of  the  Tottenham  Court 
Eoad.  Listening  to  the  band  playing  on  the 
Alameda  of  some  Spanish-American  city  he 
dreams  of  the  lights  of  the  Eumson  Eoad,  or 
the  Hudson  as  it  appears  from  a  house  on  the 
top  of  a  hill  in  Dobbs  Ferry.  But  once  back 
again  among  the  lights  of  Broadway  his 
thoughts  are  all  of  Mediterranean  ports  and 
waving  palm  trees.  McWilliams  summed  up 
the  Davis  hero  at  the  end  of  Soldiers  of  For- 
tiwe.  " There  were  three  of  us,"  he  said  to 
Clay,  "and  one  got  shot,  and  one  got  married, 
and  the  third — f  You  will  grow  fat,  Clay,  and 
live  on  Fifth  Avenue  and  wear  a  high  silk  hat, 
and  some  day  when  you're  sitting  in  your  club 


355 


356  THE  NEW  YOEK 

you  11  read  a  paragraph  in  a  newspaper  with  a 
queer  Spanish  date-line  to  it,  and  this  will  all 
come  back  to  you — this  heat,  and  the  palms,  and 
the  fever,  and  the  days  when  you  lived  on  plan- 
tains and  we  watched  our  trestles  grow  out 
across  the  canons,  and  you'll  be  willing  to  give 
your  hand  to  sleep  in  a  hammock  again,  and  to 
feel  the  sweat  running  down  your  back,  and 
you'll  want  to  chuck  your  gun  up  against  your 
chin  and  shoot  into  a  line  of  men  and  the  police- 
men won't  let  you,  and  your  wife  won't  let  you. 
That's  what  you're  giving  up.  There  it  is. 
Take  a  good  look  at  it.  You'll  never  see  it 
again." 

So,  too,  after  Honduranian  adventure,  Eoyal 
Macklin  returns  to  New  York,  determined  to 
settle  down  to  a  useful  and  monotonous  exist- 
ence. He  will  become  Schwartz  and  Carboy's 
Mr.  Macklin.  Perhaps,  in  time,  he  may  rise  to 
the  importance  of  calling  the  local  conductors 
by  their  familiar  names.  "Bill,  what  was  the 
matter  with  the  8.13  this  morning?"  But  one 
day  he  crosses  the  East  Eiver  for  a  visit  to  the 
Navy  Yard,  and  returning  in  the  winter  eve- 
ning, makes  his  way  along  the  Brooklyn  water 


OF  THE  NOVELISTS  357 

front,  twinkling  with  thousands  of  lights. 
Over  the  wharves  the  names  of  strange  and 
beautiful  ports  mocked  at  him  from  the  sheds  of 
the  steamship  lines.  "Bahia,  Eio  de  Janeiro, 
and  the  Eiver  Plata, "  "  Guayaquil,  Callao,  and 
Santiago,"  "Cape  Town,  Dustan,  and  Lorenzo 
Marquez."  At  one  wharf  a  steamer  of  the  Eed 
D  line,  just  in  from  La  Guayra,  is  making  fast, 
and  Macklin  quickly  creeps  on  board.  For  half 
an  hour,  talking  Spanish  to  the  captain,  smelling 
the  cargo,  and  sipping  Jamaica  rum,  he  is  under 
the  Southern  Cross,  and  New  York  is  three 
thousand  miles  astern. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

The  City  of  Joys,  Tawdry  and  Sublime — The  Statue  of 
Liberty— The  Old  Coney  Transformed— Blinker  Finds  His 
Brothers. 

"HE  no  longer  saw  a  rabble,  but  his  brothers 
seeking  the  ideal."  These  words,  in  which 
0.  Henry  described  the  emotions  of  one  Alex- 
ander Blinker,  millionaire  owner  of  certain 
New  York  tenement  property  known  as  "Brick- 
dust  Row/'  when,  in  the  company  of  Florence, 
who  trimmed  hats  in  a  millinery  shop,  he  found 
the  soul  of  the  joys,  tawdry,  tinsel,  yet  sublime 
of  Coney  Island,  might  well  be  the  epitaph  on 
William  Sidney  Porter's  tomb.  It  matters  not 
what  your  station  in  life  may  be ;  or  how  varied 
your  experiences  may  have  been  in  the  pursuit 
of  adventure  and  pleasure.  Some  day,  in  the 
warm  summer  sunshine,  make  that  journey  in 
the  company  of  Masie,  of  "A  Lickpenny 
Lover,"  or  of  Dennis  Carnahan,  of  "The 
Greater  Coney,"  or  of  Tobin,  of  "Tobin's 
Palm,"  and  like  Blinker,  learn  a  lesson  and  see 

358 


NEW  YORK  OF  THE  NOVELISTS     359 

a  light.  From  the  end  of  a  long  pier  you  cross 
the  gang  plank,  mount  to  an  upper  deck,  and 
seize  two  camp  stools.  The  boat  slides  away 
from  her  moorings,  past  the  Battery,  and  out 
across  the  Upper  Bay.  The  air  is  rent  by  the 
rival  clamour  of  instrumental  music  and  the 
voice  of  the  waiter  soliciting  orders  for  drinks. 
To  the  left  is  Governor 's  Island,  and  to  the  right 
the  Statue  of  Liberty.  The  latter  you  have 
contemplated,  unmoved,  a  score  of  times.  But 
see  it  now  as  0.  Henry  saw  it  in  "The  Lady 
Higher  Up,"  no  longer  a  mere  symbol,  but  a 
woman,  human  and  humanly  envious,  passing 
the  time  of  day  with  her  neighbour,  Diana,  of 
the  Madison  Square  Tower.  Made  by  a  Dago 
and  presented  to  the  American  people  on  behalf 
of  the  French  Government  for  the  purpose  of 
welcoming  Irish  immigrants  into  the  Dutch  city 
of  New  York,  Miss  Liberty  has  acquired  a  fine 
Hibernian  brogue,  a  brogue  that  for  the  mo- 
ment is  hoarsened  on  account  of  the  peanut  hulls 
left  in  her  throat  by  the  last  boat-load  of  tour- 
ists from  Marietta,  Ohio.  Hers  is  a  lonesome 
life,  she  complains,  not  to  be  compared  with  that 
of  Miss  Diana,  who  has  the  best  job  for  a  statue 


360  %  THE  NEW  YOEK 

in  the  whole  town  with  the  Cat  Show  and  the 
Horse  Show,  and  the  military  tournaments 
when  the  privates  "look  grand  as  generals  and 
the  generals  try  to  look  grand  as  floor-walkers, " 
and  the  Sportsman's  Show,  and  above  all,  the 
French  Ball,  "  where  the  original  Cohens  and 
the  Eobert  Emmett  Sangerbund  Society  dance 
the  Highland  fling  with  one  another." 

The  Narrows  are  passed,  there  is  a  pleasur- 
able chop  to  the  sea,  and  soon  the  boat  is  made 
fast  beneath  the  great  towers  and  revolving 
wheels  of  the  Island.  It  was  on  the  new  Coney 
that  has  risen,  "like  a  Phoenix  bird"  that  Den- 
nis Carnahan  expatiated  ironically.  "The  old 
Bowery,  where  they  used  to  take  your  tintype 
by  force,  and  give  you  knockout  drops  before 
having  your  palm  read,  is  now  called  the  Wall 
Street  of  the  Island.  The  wienerwurst  stands 
are  required  by  law  to  keep  a  news  ticker  in 
them;  and  the  doughnuts  are  examined  every 
four  years  by  a  retired  steamboat  inspector. 
The  nigger  man's  head  that  was  used  by  the  old 
patrons  to  throw  baseballs  at  is  now  illegal ;  and 
by  order  of  the  Police  Commissioner  the  image 
of  a  man  driving  an  automobile  has  been  sub- 


OF  THE  NOVELISTS  361 

stituted.  The  reprehensible  and  degrading  re- 
sorts that  disgraced  old  Coney  are  said  to  be 
wiped  out.  The  wiping-out  process  consists  of 
raising  the  price  from  ten  cents  to  twenty-five 
cents,  and  having  a  blonde  named  Maudie  to  sell 
tickets  instead  of  Micky,  the  Bowery  Bite." 
Something  of  the  flavours  of  strange  cities  and 
seas  is  there.  Else  how  could  Masie,  of  "A 
Lickpenny  Lover "  have  interpreted  the  words 
of  Irving  Carter  as  she  did?  Shores  where 
summer  is  eternal  and  the  waves  are  always 
rippling,  grand  and  lovely  palaces  and  towers 
full  of  beautiful  pictures  and  statues,  streets  of 
water,  elephants  of  India,  temples  of  the  Hin- 
doos and  Brahmins,  gardens  of  Japan,  camel 
trains  and  chariot  races  of  Persia,  were  in  the 
promise  that  he  held  out.  And  Masie  thought 
she  understood.  ."A  cheap  guy,  who  wanted 
me  to  marry  him  and  go  down  to  Coney  Island 
for  a  wedding  tour." 

Like  Alexander  Blinker  consider  the  temples, 
pagodas,  and  kiosks  of  popularised  delights. 
Be  trampled,  hustled  and  crowded  by  hoi  polloi. 
Be  bumped  by  basket  parties  and  have  your 
clothes  candied  by  sticky  children.  Swallow 


362     NEW  YORK  OF  THE  NOVELISTS 

the  cheap  cigar  smoke  blown  into  your  face 
by  insolent  youth.  Listen  to  the  publicity  gen- 
tlemen with  megaphones,  and  the  hideous  blare 
of  a  thousand  bands.  Mingle  with  the  mob,  the 
multitude,  the  proletariat  shrieking,  struggling, 
hurrying,  panting,  hurling  itself  in  incontinent 
frenzy,  with  unabashed  abandon,  into  the 
ridiculous  sham  palaces  of  trumpery  and  tinsel 
pleasures.  Then  see  Coney  aright — no  longer 
a  mass  of  vulgarians  seeking  gross  joys,  but  a 
hundred  thousand  true  idealists.  Perceive  that 
though  counterfeit  and  false  are  the  garish  joys 
of  those  spangled  temples,  deep  under  the  gilt 
surface  they  offer  saving  and  apposite  balm 
and  satisfaction  to  the  restless  human  heart. 
Find  here  at  least  the  husk  of  Eomance,  the 
empty  but  shining  casque  of  Chivalry,  the 
breath-catching  though  safe-guarded  dip  and 
flight  of  Adventure,  the  magic  carpet  that  trans- 
ports you  to  the  realms  of  Fairyland.  See  no 
longer  a  rabble,  but  your  brothers  seeking  the 
ideal. 


MRS.  LIBERTY.  "MADE  BY  A  DAGO  AND  PRESENTED  TO  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 
ON  BEHALF  OF  THE  FRENCH  GOVERNMENT  FOR  THE  PURPOSE  OF  WELCOM- 
ING IRISH  IMMIGRANTS  INTO  THE  DUTCH  CITY  OF  NEW  YORK."  O.  HENRY'S 
"THE  LADY  HIGHER  UP" 


CHAPTEE  IX 

The  New  Jersey  Trail— The  Atlantic  Highlands— Days 
of  the  Revolution — The  Rumson  Road — The  Country  of  the 
"Pig  People"— Gothic  Towers  and  Stately  Elms. 

THIS  Pilgrimage  has  touched  the  shores  of  the 
Hudson,  the  old  Boston  Post  Road,  Westches- 
ter,  and  Long  Island.  But  no  discussion  of  the 
City  Beyond  would  be  complete  that  did  not  in- 
clude New  Jersey.  "The  joke  State "  it  has 
been  called  by  its  detractors.  But  a  certain 
King  George  the  Third  did  not  find  it  so,  nor  the 
Hessian  mercenaries  loaned  for  the  crushing  of 
infant  liberties.  The  War  of  the  Revolution, 
fomented  in  New  England,  was  fought  out 
across  the  breast  of  New  Jersey.  Cambridge 
has  her  Oak,  but  Princeton  and  Trenton  had 
their  battles,  battles  that  did  so  much  to  turn 
the  tide.  Through  all  the  vital  years  there  were 
the  two  armies  facing  each  other ;  the  forces  of 
King  George  in  Staten  Island  and  the  Jersey 
lowlands,  the  Continentals  in  the  hills  of  the 
Blue  Ridge  range.  And  what  history  records, 
is  reflected  in  the  historical  novels.  There  arc 

363 


364  THE  NEW  YOEK 

Weir  Mitchell's  Hugh  Wynne,  and  Paul  Lei- 
cester Ford's  Janice  Meredith,  and  K.  N. 
Stephen's  Philip  Winwood,  and  M.  Imlay  Tay- 
lor's A  Yankee  Volunteer,  and  J.  0.  Kaler's 
Across  the  Delaware,  and  J.  A.  Altsheler's  In 
Hostile  Red.  Among  the  juveniles  may  be  men- 
tioned James  Barnes's  For  King  or  Country, 
and  G.  A.  Henty's  True  to  the  Old  Flag,  and  E. 
T.  Tomlinson's  Washington's  Young  Aids,  and 
In  the  Camp  of  Cornwallis. 

Of  the  Atlantic  Highlands  J.  Fenimore 
Cooper  wrote  in  Water  Witch,  and  about  these 
Highlands  were  scenes  of  a  rousing  old  tale  of 
years  ago,  Admiral  Porter's  Allan  Dare  and 
Robert  le  Diable.  To  New  Jersey  the  reader 
must  go  for  the  backgrounds  of  Rudder  Grange 
and  other  of  Frank  E.  Stockton's  stories. 
From  the  great  hotels  of  Lakewood  venture  a 
few  miles  into  the  strange  country  of  the  "pig 
people ' '  which  was  described  by  Herman  Knick- 
erbocker Viele  in  Myra  of  the  Pines.  To  the 
eastward  is  Point  Pleasant,  the  Pleasantville  of 
Charles  Belmont  Davis 's  In  Another  Moment. 
For  the  Natasqua  Eiver  of  the  tale  read  the 
Manasquan.  Northward  are  the  lights  along 
the  ocean  drive  at  Long  Branch  and  up  the 


OF  THE  NOVELISTS  365 

Eumson  Road,  which  Eobert  Clay  pointed  out 
in  vision  to  Hope  Langham  in  Richard  Harding 
Davis 's  Soldiers  of  Fortune. 

Where  the  Lincoln  Highway  runs  through  the 
town  of  Lawrenceville,  on  the  right  side  of  the 
road  going  towards  Philadelphia,  there  is  a  sign 
reading  "The  Jigger  Shop"  which  attracts  the 
immediate  attention  of  a  great  many  American 
boys.  For  it  was  the  scene  of  sundry  exploits 
of  "Dink"  Stover,  and  "Doc"  MacNooder,  and 
"The  Tennessee  Shad"  and  "Flash"  Condit, 
and  "Snorky"  Green,  and  "The  Prodigious 
Hickey,"  and  a  score  more  of  the  ingenuous 
youths  of  Owen  Johnson's  tales  of  life  at  the 
Lawrenceville  school,  John  C.  Green  Founda- 
tion. It  was  there  the  "Hungry"  Smeed  es- 
tablished his  "Great  Pancake  Record"  that  was 
to  go  down  imperishably  to  decades  of  school- 
boys when  touchdowns  and  home  runs  should  be 
only  tinkling  sounds.  A  step  across  the  road, 
and  we  are  on  the  pleasant  walks  that  wind  past 
Woodhull  and  Dickinson  and  the  other  houses 
out  to  the  athletic  field  where  Stover  and 
"Tough"  McCarty  fought  shoulder  to  shoulder, 
and  in  the  shadow  of  the  goal  posts  flung  back 
the  onset  of  the  foe.  Then  there  is  a  university 


366     NEW  YORK  OF  THE  NOVELISTS 

town,  and  a  campus  of  Gothic  towers  and  stately 
elms,  clustering  about  a  long  building  which  was 
once  the  largest  and  most  imposing  in  the  West- 
ern Hemisphere.  That  building  was  there  in 
the  pre-revolutionary  period  in  which  Booth 
Tarkington  laid  his  Cherry,  that  whimsical,  fan- 
tastic tale  of  the  erudite  Mr.  Sudgeberry,  and 
the  ribbons  of  Miss  Sylvia  Gray.  It  was  in  the 
heart  and  mind  of  Harkless,  of  The  Gentleman 
from  Indiana,  as  he  sat  on  a  fence  rail  and 
looked  back  over  the  seven  years  of  unfulfil- 
ment.  It  was  one  of  the  bright  memories  of 
Felix  Piers,  of  Stephen  French  Whitman's  Pre- 
destined. It  stood  for  days  in  the  life  of  the 
hero  of  Ernest  Poole's  The  Harbour,  it  has 
stood  for  days  in  the  lives  of  heroes  of  stories 
of  Jesse  Lynch  Williams,  of  James  Barnes,  and 
of  a  score  more.  To  the  loyal  it  means  the  tro- 
phied  past  and  a  limitless  future. 

And  when  in  dust  these  walls  are  laid 
With  reverence  and  awe 
Another  throng  shall  breathe  our  song. 
In  praise — 

THE  END 


THE  UNIVERSITY  LIBRARY 
UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA,  SANTA  CRUZ 


This  book  is  due  on  the  last  DATE  stamped  below. 


JSHP58-  RHBn 


SEP 

DEC  1  5 

NOV  201Q74 


MAY  1  6  '83      N 

MAY  6     1983  iKC'fl 


50m-l,'69(J5643s8)2373 — 3A,1 


AT  mi F 


PS144.N4M3 


3  2106  00204  7113 


